by Lila Shaara
But then he saw the giant Thorpe woman leaving the salon once more, the two dark little girls trailing after her. She locked the door of the salon, then turned and walked not to the shotgun shack where he knew she lived but to the double-wide beyond it. She and the children knocked on the door of the trailer and were let in. Darcy wasn’t sure this was worth much, figuring they might just be visiting since there seemed to be such chumminess in this neck of the woods, but then the front door of the Dupree house opened again, this time disgorging the entire Thorpe party, as well as the two women who lived there. The fortune teller and her blond niece left the double-wide with two small suitcases and walked toward the big house behind the purple shrine. The Thorpes followed them, empty-handed. They disappeared through the pine trees, although it seemed likely that they were headed for the Purple Lady’s house. He was pretty sure they hadn’t spotted him. He got the cell phone from his pocket and pushed the call button, having the number already programmed in. He loved his country, but after he reported in, he was going home for a shower and a cold, cold beer.
From a pay phone in the parking lot of the park office, Harry called to confirm the appointment he’d made the following day with Louise Glade at Cantwell University. They had the rest of the day free, their last in the cabin, so they made one more fishing expedition on the big lake. A cooler lay next to Harry, placed on a large and level rock. When Dusty was little, they had fished all the time at different places in northern Virginia and southern Maryland, the same cooler between them. At that time, Harry would occasionally risk putting one beer in and had never thought much about it. Now he knew one beer was potentially disastrous; the cooler contained only soda and Gatorade.
“You should know that your mom and I are not getting back together,” Harry said.
“I figured.”
“You okay with that?”
“Does it matter? I mean, whether or not I’m okay with it won’t change anything, will it?”
“I guess not. I just wanted to know. Your mom said something about you wanting us to be a regular family again. I thought you had a right to know that it wasn’t going to be like that.”
“It was never like that, Dad.” This was a mutter, and Harry wasn’t sure he heard it right.
“What?”
“I never thought we were gonna be all happy-happy anyway. You know Mom’s got a boyfriend, right?”
Harry hadn’t known but wasn’t as surprised as he should have been. “Oh. Well, I guess it’s good that it’s all right with you.”
“I didn’t say it was all right with me. It’s just the way it is.”
Harry thought for a moment, then said, “You miss your uncle.”
Dusty seemed taken aback. “Well, yeah, I guess.”
“I miss him, too. But it’s not as bad as it used to be. You just have to wait awhile and let time do its thing. Most things don’t hurt as bad after a while as they do at first.”
“Did time make you hate Mom less?”
“I don’t hate your mom.”
“I do.”
Harry was surprised by Dusty’s frankness. “Why?” he said before considering whether or not he wanted to hear the answer.
“Come on, Dad. Did you really not know? Uncle Lawrence was always at our house, mostly when you weren’t there.” Dusty was facing the water, his jawbone poking through his thin cheek as he ground his teeth between sentences. “When you were traveling. Didn’t you know? How could you not know?”
Harry realized he was holding his breath, his hands gripping his pole. He didn’t say anything for a few minutes while looking for a place to put it down. He found a pair of rocks where he lodged the handle of the rod just above the reel, knowing that if a fish took the bait now, he might lose the whole thing. He turned to look at his son, who had a scared, mulish look that Harry hated.
“Talk,” Harry said.
Dusty stared at a squirrel in a tree across the lake that seemed interested in the two of them. “I walked in on them once.” His face was so white it looked like cream. Harry could see the pulse beating in his slight neck, a blue throbbing under delicate skin. “I thought either you knew and you were, you know, like, a wimp, or you didn’t, and you were stupid.” Dusty started crying, and Harry’s arms went around him.
“I was both,” Harry said into his son’s thick hair.
40
SIX OF SWORDS
Going somewhere. Things will improve. A little
The next morning it rained; Harry thought that they had timed their fishing well. They left the cabin and drove east, stopping early at a family-style restaurant on the highway. Over breakfast, Harry told Dusty as much as he knew about Charles Ziegart and Emily Timms. “I’ve been reading a biography of Nikola Tesla, Emily’s hero.”
“Another science chick?” At least his son seemed to be getting the idea that it was good to occasionally swallow before speaking.
“He was a science dude.” Dusty smirked. Harry went on, “He was Serbian but became an American citizen. He was a contemporary of Thomas Edison’s. They hated each other, Tesla at least with some reason. Edison essentially stole the whole idea of alternating current from him.”
“I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know exactly what it means.”
“Alternating current is what powers virtually every electrical outlet in the world. It’s efficient and incredibly safe. Edison’s original system used direct current, which is neither. Tesla was working for Westinghouse when he designed an AC system, so Westinghouse, and later Edison, got all the profits.”
“That sucks.”
“You bet. Tesla invented radio, too.”
“I thought it was that Italian dude.”
“Marconi. He took credit for it and got rich, but even the federal courts ruled that the original concepts belonged to Tesla. He invented lots of other things. X-ray machines, remote-control ships, even some of the technology used in cell phones. And this was all in the early twentieth century, when a lot of this kind of stuff was only taken seriously in science fiction. He offered his services to the American government over and over, but they ignored him while he was alive. He was too far ahead of his time in all kinds of ways, so a lot of people thought he was crazy.”
“Like da Vinci. Inventing submarines before there were engines that could power them.”
“Exactly. After he died, the FBI took away most of his notes and they disappeared.”
“Whoa. Like The X-Files.”
“But real. He’d figured out a way to generate a huge amount of electricity for almost no cost, no fossil fuels needed. Sometimes he gave demonstrations for big audiences, where he’d do things like turn on lamps by plugging them into the ground and make bolts of lightning in the sky over his lab.”
“How?”
“No one knows. The biography I read said that he could take just a small bit of power and somehow send it into the ground; the beam would go back and forth through the earth, stopped by the crust, back and forth, over and over, building and building with each pass. The beam travels at the speed of light, so the whole process only takes a fraction of a second. When you tap it, the result is a huge amount of power, amplified thousands of times over the original source. One of his big dreams was to build an enormous tower and broadcast electricity so everyone could pick it up on a receiver and use it for free, like radio.”
“It could, like, stop global warming.”
“It could help, anyway. The problem was, who’d pay for the tower? People don’t like giving stuff away for free, especially when it’s stuff they’re already selling. He actually started building it, but the money ran out, so it was never finished. Eventually the tower was torn down for scrap metal.”
Dusty said, “I can see why he’d be a hero to a science nerd like Emily Timms.”
“Damn right. All she wanted to do was save the world.” He said before he remembered who he was talking to, “I’m wondering if someone killed her for it.”
The waitress was bored, w
hich suited Jonathan just fine. He said, “You understand the instructions I’ve given you?”
Darcy nodded, three quick jerks.
“You have any questions?”
“There’ll be backup, you said?”
“Plenty. Don’t worry, Mr. Murphy. We wouldn’t leave you on your own. There is some risk, I won’t lie to you about that. But because you’re a familiar face in the neighborhood, you won’t be arousing any premature suspicion. It’s really fortunate that we could find someone of your caliber so perfectly situated for our needs.” Jonathan hadn’t taken a drink of his coffee. He had on glasses that he didn’t need, and a baseball cap that he’d bought that morning at a truck stop even farther out of town than this hellhole. He intended to leave the Tampa Bay Bucs T-shirt in a Dumpster along with the hat and glasses. It was unlikely that anyone would remember the two of them, but even if they did, it was far less likely that anyone would remember his face. He’d probably throw the cell phones into Lake Austell, heavy metals be damned. “All we need you to do is draw the old lady out of her house. We really want the fortune teller’s niece, but the older woman will do if she’s all we can get.”
“What do you want me to do with my gun?”
“Nothing. The only reason I suggest it is that you might need to show it to the old lady, but only if she gives you any serious trouble. I wouldn’t even load it, if I were you. We don’t want you shooting anyone.” He watched while Darcy took a sip of coffee with a very slightly trembling hand. “Mr. Murphy,” he said, giving Darcy a sweet, confident smile. “I’ve got your back.”
Louise Glade ate her steak as though she was on death row. “I love this place. I only come here once a year with my husband on our anniversary.”
“If I pay, it’s deductible,” said Harry, relieved that he only had a salad. Dusty had gotten a hamburger and French fries. The three of them were sitting in a chain steak house on the outskirts of Lucasta, Pennsylvania. The decor tended to faux-medieval: resin casts of suits of armor, halberds crossed on the fake wood walls, coats of arms and tapestries hung at regular intervals. It was dark, and the light had a reddish-yellowish tint, brought on by the orange globes in the hanging wooden light fixtures; they were covered with metallic studs and made Harry think of saddles.
“I hope you do right by Emily,” said Louise around the plank of beef that she’d just put in her mouth. Harry had been hoping to speak to Gillian DeGraff, to Pamela Ziegart, to anyone in the Ziegart School. The only person he’d found in was Louise, who’d looked around as though she was being hunted and scooted Harry and Dusty out of the office. The term had ended and she said most everyone was out of town or recreating in some way. He hadn’t called to make appointments with anyone else at the university because he was fairly certain that no one would see him if he warned them of his trip. Even if he talked to no one at Cantwell besides Louise, he still wanted to take a look at the campus, at where the Ziegarts had lived, where the accident had happened. Louise had hinted that she was hungry and that her husband would be working the night shift. When Harry had offered to buy her an early dinner, she had been so happy that she was almost pretty.
“I’ll do my best to be fair to Emily,” said Harry. “To be honest, I’m not even sure I’m going to write anything about her. I do find it interesting how many people around here seem angry at her. I understand that she didn’t break up Ziegart’s first marriage. But I guess if she threw herself at him, that could have put a lot of people off.”
Louise swallowed a large bite of meat, then wiped her mouth. “Oh no. Oh my God, no. She wouldn’t have gone near him in that way. Charlie went after her. He swept her away the moment she walked through the door into the office. You can’t imagine the force of his charm when he had it on full blast. She was fresh from the farmhouse by the look of her, and she didn’t have a chance.”
“Why?” Harry asked, although he was pretty sure he knew.
Louise looked at him with pity. “So he could take her work, of course.”
Dusty spoke for the first time, having overcome his fascination with the extravagant way that Louise attacked her dinner. “It’s so bogus that he could do that.”
Harry had already explained to his son the position that most graduate students were in regarding their research, so he ignored the remark. “Did she have any friends here? Besides you? Any other students?”
Louise nodded. Harry blessed the fact that her mouth was closed so nothing tumbled out with the motion. She chewed for a bit, swallowed, and said, “Fay Levy. Sorry I didn’t think of her before, but she wasn’t a graduate student. She was a physics major while Emily was here.”
“An undergraduate?”
“Uh-huh. There weren’t a lot of girls around, and I think that alone gave them something in common. Fay worshiped Emily. Her role model, and so on.”
Harry said, “I’m guessing that didn’t work out all that well.”
“You said it,” Louise said around an enormous wad of meat. Harry had a hard time looking at her; she’d apparently never been taught to close her mouth when it was full of food, even if the food tended to fall out. “Fay managed to graduate just after Charlie died. I haven’t seen her since.”
“Do you know where she is now?”
Louise shrugged, dislodging a fragment of French fry from the side of her mouth. “I know she didn’t go to graduate school anywhere. No one in the department was asked for a recommendation letter. I would’ve been the one to type it.”
“Anyone I could ask who might know where she is?”
Louise shook her head again, then said, “No one’s around, so we could go back to the office and you could hang over my shoulder while I do an online search. Even if we just find out where she’s working, I have phone books in my desk for most of the towns around here. You could look in them, see if her name’s there. I’ve never had a reason to look before. But if she got married and changed her name or if she moved out of the area, it won’t do you any good. Although,” she added, swallowing her last enormous bite, “I doubt she’s married. If you know what I mean.”
“It’s worth a shot,” Harry said, thankful that she was finished with her meal. “I appreciate it.”
“It’s okay,” said Louise. “What’s for dessert?”
· · ·
The department offices were as quiet as a desert. There was no Fay Levy in the local phone directory, but Louise had luck on the Internet. She was listed on the faculty of a private girl’s high school in Godfrey Lake, a town about fifty miles from Lucasta. Louise found a listing for “F. Levy” in the white pages online. She even allowed Harry to make the call from the office phone since he couldn’t get his cell phone to work. He left a message on an answering machine, including the number of the hotel where he and Dusty were staying. He thanked Louise and promised her that, if they returned, she’d be treated to another steak dinner.
“I need to check in with Mom, and see how Grandpa’s doing. Can I try your cell phone again, Dad?”
“Your mom didn’t buy you another one, eh?”
“No. She said you didn’t think it was a good idea.”
“See if you can get it to work. I haven’t had any luck.”
Dusty took Harry’s cell phone and power cord. Seeing the phone’s blank display, he plugged it into the outlet in the car under the CD player. He stared at the display for another few minutes, then said, “It’s not charging.”
“Shit,” said Harry. “I mean, crud. I got a new battery from the guy at the phone place. Or rather, a recycled one. It worked for a few days.”
“It’s not working now.”
“You can call her on the phone in our room. It’ll cost a million dollars, but I don’t know what else to do. I can’t even check my voice mail. We should go back to the hotel anyway. Maybe we can find a good movie on pay-per-view or something. I want to stay by the phone in case Fay Levy calls. I can’t do much else after that meal anyway. I feel like Caligula when he couldn’t take time out for a t
rip to the vomitorium.”
“Gross.”
“That’s my special charm, son. I hope you inherited it. It drives the ladies wild.” A moment later Harry said, “Speaking of which, I’m about to start seeing someone. Well, I guess I’ve already been seeing her. But not really.”
Dusty rolled his eyes. “God, I don’t have a chance at being anything but a geek, do I? Mom keeps saying I got all your genes. You’re not making me feel too optimistic about my future.”
“We’re not geeks, we’re intellectuals.” At Dusty’s look, Harry added, “I know; in high school they’re the same thing. Anyway, this woman and I have been friends for a while. I’ve been hesitating for a lot of reasons, but they’re all pretty bogus.”
“The Waitress?”
“She’s a cook.”
“Does she like you?”
“I think so.” He thought about Maggie’s face when he’d asked her to go to Serge’s party. There was only one likely reason that she’d said yes, yet he’d more or less stomped on her emotions once she’d arrived at his house. The realization made him feel sick. “I’ve hurt her feelings pretty badly, so this may not be a simple matter of just asking her out.”
“Are you supposed to give her jewelry or something? That’s what Mom always says you’re supposed to do when you want a girl to like you.”
“I don’t think buying Maggie jewelry will impress her at all. Maybe if I can keep her out of jail for zapping people with a stun gun, she’ll decide I’m okay.”
“She zaps people? Cool.”
Dusty phoned his mother from their room. Harry was glad the call was short because he knew it would cost the moon, but it was depressing how little his son and his ex-wife had to say to each other. Then Harry made another expensive call to his own machine. There was only one message, Julie Canfield reiterating her offer to help him with his research over the summer. He shook off his dismay at this and called Maggie’s house. The phone rang and rang, but no one answered. Oh, well, he thought. At least I don’t have to say “I want to be your boyfriend” on an answering machine.
