Koontz, Dean R. - Strangers

by Strangers(Lit)

  In addition to his own name and that of Ginger Weiss, there were eight

  on the list. One of them, Gerald Salcoe of Monterey, California, had

  rented two rooms for himself, his wife, and two daughters. He had

  entered an address but no telephone. When Dom tried to get it from the

  Area Code 408 Information Operator, he was told the number was unlisted.

  Disappointed, he moved on to Cal Sharkle, the long-haul trucker, a

  repeat customer known to Faye and Ernie. Sharkle lived in Evanston,

  Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. He had included his telephone number in

  the motel registry. Dom dialed it but discovered that the telephone had

  been disconnected and that no new number was listed.

  "We can check his more recent entries on the current registry," Ernie

  said. "Maybe he's moved to another town. Maybe we have his new address

  somewhere."

  Faye put a cup of coffee on the counter where Dom could reach it, then

  joined the others at the table.

  Dom had better luck on his third attempt, when he dialed Alan Rykoff in

  Las Vegas. A woman answered, and he said, "Mrs. Rykoff?"

  She hesitated. "I was Mrs. Rykoff. My name's Monatella now, since the

  divorce."

  "Oh. I see. Well, my name's Dominick Corvaisis. I'm calling from the

  Tranquility Motel up here in Elko County. You, your former husband, and

  your daughter stayed here for a few days in July, two summers ago?"

  "Uh . . . yes, we did."

  "Miss Monatelia, are either you or your daughter or your ex-husband

  having . . . difficulties-frightening and extraordinary problems?"

  This time her hesitation was pregnant with meaning. "Is this some sick

  joke? Obviously, you know what happened to Alan."

  "Please, Miss Monatella, believe me: I don't know what happened to your

  ex-husband. But I do know there's a good chance that you or him or your

  daughter-or all of you-are suffering from inexplicable psychological

  problems, that you're having frightening and repetitive nightmares you

  can't remember, and that some of these nightmares involve the moon."

  She gasped twice in surprise as Dom was speaking, and when she tried to

  respond she had difficulty talking.

  When he realized she was on the verge of tears, he interrupted. "Miss

  Monatella, I don't know what's happened to you and your family, but the

  worst is past. The worst is past. Because whatever might still be to

  come . . . at least you're not alone any more."

  Over twenty-four hundred miles east of Elko County, in Manhattan, Jack

  Twist spent Sunday afternoon giving away more money.

  On returning from the Guardmaster heist in Connecticut the previous

  night, he had driven through the city, looking for those who were both

  in need and deserving, and he had not rid himself of all the cash until

  five o'clock in the morning. On the edge of physical and emotional

  collapse, he'd returned to his Fifth Avenue apartment, gone immediately

  to bed and instantly to sleep.

  He dreamed again of the deserted highway in an empty moon-washed

  landscape, and of the stranger in the darkvisored helmet who pursued him

  on foot. As the moonlight suddenly turned blood-red, he woke from the

  dream in panic at one o'clock Sunday afternoon, flailing at his pillow.

  A blood-red moon? He wondered what it all meant, if anything.

  He showered, shaved, dressed, and took time for only a quick breakfast

  consisting of an orange and a half-stale croissant.

  In the large walk-in closet that served the master bedroom, he removed

  the cleverly concealed false panel and inventoried the contents of the

  three-foot-deep secret storage space. The jewelry from the job in

  October was finally gone, successfully fenced, and most of the money

  from the fratellanza warehouse in early December had been converted to

  scores of cashiers' checks and mailed to Jack's accounts at three Swiss

  banks. Only a hundred twenty-five thousand remained, his emergency

  getaway fund.

  He transferred most of the cash to a briefcase: nine banded pickets of

  hundred-dollar bills, a hundred bills in each, and five packets of

  twenty-dollar bills, a hundred in each. That left twenty-five thousand

  still in his cache, which seemed more than enough now that he was no

  longer involved in criminal activity and would not be putting himself in

  situations that might necessitate a swift exit from the state or

  country.

  Although Jack intended to dispose of a considerable portion of his

  ill-gotten wealth, he certainly did not plan to give away all of it and

  leave himself penniless. That might be good for his soul, but it would

  be bad for his future and undeniably foolish. However, he had eleven

  safe-deposit boxes in eleven of the city's banks-additional emergency

  caches in case he needed to escape but could not reach the money behind

  the false partition in his bedroom closet-and those caches contained

  more than another quarter of a million. His Swiss accounts were worth

  in excess of four million. It was far more than he needed. He was

  looking forward to shedding half of that fortune during the next couple

  of weeks, at which point he would pause to decide what he wanted to do

  with his future. Eventually, he might give away even more.

  At three-thirty Sunday afternoon, he carried his moneyfilled briefcase

  out into the city. All the strangers' faces, which for eight years had

  seemed fiercely hostile, every one, now seemed like animated portraits

  of promise and dazzling possibilities, every one.

  The Block kitchen smelled of coffee and hot chocolate, then of cinnamon

  and pastry dough when Faye took a package of breakfast rolls from the

  freezer and popped them in the oven.

  While the others sat at the table, listening, Dom continued to call the

  people who had registered at the motel on that special Friday night.

  He reached Jim Gestron, who turned out to be a photographer from L A.

  Gestron had driven throughout the West that summer, shooting on

  assignment for Sunset and other magazines. Initially, he was friendly,

  but as he heard more of Dom's story, he cooled off. If Gestron had been

  brainwashed, the mind-control experts had been as successful with him as

  with Faye Block. The photographer was having no dreams, no problems.

  Dom's tale of brainwashing, somnambulism, nyctophobia, obsessions with

  the moon, suicides, and paranormal experiences struck Gestron as the

  babbling of a seriously disturbed person. He said as much and hung up

  in the middle of the conversation.

  Next, Dom called Harriet Bellot in Sacramento, who was no more troubled

  than Gestron. She was, she said, a fiftyyear-old unmarried

  schoolteacher who had developed an interest in the Old West when, as a

  young WAC, she was stationed in Arizona. Every summer, she traveled old

  wagontrain routes and visited the sites of the forts and Indian

  settlements of another age, usually sleeping in her little camper but

  sometimes splurging on a motel room. She sounded like one of those

  likable, dedicated, but stern teachers who brooked no nonsense from her

  pupils, and she brooked none from Dom. When he started talking about


  fanciful stuff like poltergeist phenomena, she hung up, too.

  "Does that make you feel better, Faye?" Ernie asked. "You're not the

  only one whose memories were so thoroughly scrubbed away."

  "Doesn't make me feel one damn bit better," Faye said. "I'd rather be

  suffering problems like you or Dom than feel nothing. I feel as if a

  piece of me was cut out and thrown away."

  Perhaps she's right, Dom thought. Perhaps nightmares, phobias, and

  terrors of one kind or another are better than having a little pocket of

  absolute emptiness inside, cold and dark, which would be like carrying a

  fragment of death around within her for the rest of her life.

  When Dominick Corvaisis telephoned St. Bernadette's rectory at 4:26

  Sunday afternoon, seeking Brendan Cronin, Father Wycazik was in the

  study with officers of the Knights of Columbus, concluding the first of

  many planning sessions for the annual St. Bernadette's Spring Carnival.

  At four-thirty, Father Michael Gerrano interrupted with the news that

  the call he had just taken on the kitchen phone was from Father

  Wycazik's "cousin" in Elko, Nevada. Only a few hours ago, one day ahead

  of schedule, Brendan Cronin had boarded a United flight to Reno, taking

  advantage of cancellations that had opened up some seats, and intending

  to use a small commuter airline from Reno to Elko on Monday. At the

  moment, Brendan was still in the air with United, not yet even as far as

  Reno and in no position to be calling anyone, so Michael's message

  intrigued Father Wycazik and instantly pried him loose of the planning

  session without alerting the visitors that something extraordinary was

  happening in the lives of their parish clergy.

  Leaving the young priest to conclude matters with the Knights, the

  rector hurried to the kitchen phone and took the call meant for Brendan.

  Dominick Corvaisis, with a writer's appreciation for the fantastic, and

  Stefan, with a priest's appreciation for mystery and mysticism, became

  increasingly excited and voluble as they spoke to each other. Stefan

  swapped his knowledge of Brendan's problems and adventures-lost faith,

  miraculous cures, strange dreams-for Corvaisis' stories of poltergeist

  phenomena, somnambulism, nyctophobia, lunar obsessions, and suicides.

  Finally, Stefan could not resist asking, "Mr. Corvaisis, do you see any

  reason for an old unregenerate religious like me to hold out the hope

  that what is happening to Brendan is somehow divine in nature?"

  "Quite frankly, Father, in spite of the miraculous cures of that police

  officer and the little girl you mentioned, I don't see the hand of God

  in this. There are too many indications of human connivery in this to

  support the interpretation you'd like to put on it."

  Stefan sighed. "I suppose that's true. But I'll still cling to the

  hope that what Brendan's being called to witness there

  in Nevada is something meant to bring him back into the hands of Christ.

  I won't give up on the possibility."

  The writer laughed softly. "Father, just from what I've learned of you

  during this conversation, I suspect you'd never give up on the

  possibility of redeeming any soul, anywhere, any time. I'd guess you

  don't save souls quite the way other priests do-by finesse, by gentle

  and genteel encouragement. You strike me more as . . . well, as a

  blacksmith of the soul, hammering out the salvation of others by the

  sweat of your brow and the application of plenty of muscle. Please

  understand: I mean this as a compliment."

  Stefan laughed, too. "How else could I possibly take it? I firmly

  believe that nothing easy is worth doing. A blacksmith bent over a

  glowing forge? Yes, I do rather like the image."

  "I'll look forward to Father Cronin's arrival here tomorrow. If he's

  anything like you, Father, we'll be glad to have him on our side."

  "I'm on your side as well," Father Wycazik said, "and if there's

  anything I can do to help with your investigation, please call on me. If

  there's the slightest chance these strange events involve the manifest

  presence of God, then I do not intend to sit on the sidelines and miss

  all the action."

  The next entry on the guest list was for Bruce and Janet Cable of

  Philadelphia. Neither of them was having trouble of the sort that

  plagued Dom, Ernie, and the others. However, they were more willing to

  hear Dom out than Jim Gestron and Harriet Bellot had been, but in the

  end they were no more swayed by his story.

  The final name on the list was Thornton Wainwright, who had given a New

  York City address and telephone number. When Dom dialed it, he reached a

  Mrs. Neil Karpoly, who said the number had been hers for more than

  fourteen years and that she had never heard of Wainwright. When Dom

  read the Lexington Avenue address from the registry and inquired if that

  was where Mrs. Karpoly lived, she asked him to repeat it, then laughed.

  "No, sir, that's not where I live. And your Mr. Wainwright's not a

  trustworthy sort if he told you that's my address. Nobody lives there,

  although I'm sure there are thousands who might enjoy it. I know I

  enjoyed working there. That's the address of Bloomingdale's."

  Sandy was astonished when Dom reported this news: "Phony name and

  address? What's that mean? Was he really a guest that night? Or did

  someone add the name to the registry just to confuse us? Or . . .

  what?"

  Jack Twist possessed complete sets of sophisticated false IDsdriver's

  licenses, birth certificates, Social Security cards, credit cards,

  passports, even library cards-in eight names, including "Thornton Bains

  Wainwright," and he always employed an alias when planning and executing

  a heist. But he worked anonymously that Sunday afternoon, portioning

  out another hundred thousand dollars to startled recipients all over

  Manhattan. The largest gift was fifteen thousand to a young sailor and

  his bride of one day, whose battered old Plymouth had broken down on

  Central Park South, near the statue of Simon Bolivar. "Get a new car,"

  Jack told them as he stuffed money into their hands and playfully stuck

  a wad of bills under the sailor's hat. "And if you're wise, you won't

  tell anyone about this, especially not the newspapers. That'll just

  bring the IRS down on you. No, you don't need to know my name, and

  there's no need to thank me. Just be kind to each other, all right?

  Always be kind to each other, because we never know how much time we

  have on this world."

  In less than an hour, Jack gave away the entire hundred thousand that he

  had taken from the secret compartment in the back of his bedroom closet.

  With plenty of time on his hands, he bought a bouquet of coral-red roses

  and drove out to Westchester County, an hour from the city, to the

  memorial park in which Jenny had been buried over two weeks ago.

  Jack had not wanted to put her to rest in one of the city's crowded and

  grim cemeteries. Although he knew he was being sentimental, he felt

  that the only suitable resting place for his Jenny was in open country,

  where there would be expansive green grassy slopes and shade trees in


  the summer and peaceful vistas of snow in the winter.

  He arrived at the memorial park shortly before twilight. Although the

  uniform headstones were set flush with the earth, with no features to

  distinguish one from another, and although most of them were covered

  with snow, Jack went directly to Jenny's plot, the location of which was

  branded on his heart.

  While the dreary day faded into a drearier dusk, in a world colorless

  except for the blazing roses, Jack sat in the snow, oblivious of the

  dampness and cold, and spoke to Jenny as he had spoken to her during her

  years in a coma. He told her about the Guardmaster heist yesterday,

  about giving away all the money. As the curtain of twilight pulled down

  the heavier drape of night, the memorial park's security guard began

  driving slowly around the grounds, warning the few late visitors that

  the gates would soon close. Finally Jack stood and took one last look

  at Jenny's name cast in bronze letters on the headstone plaque, now

  illuminated by the vaguely bluish light of one of the streetlamps that

  lined the park's main drive. "I'm changing, Jenny, and I'm still not

  sure why.

  It feels good, right . . . but also sort of strange.-,' What he said

  next surprised him: "Something big is going to happen, Jenny. I don't

  know what, but something big is going to happen to me." He suddenly

  sensed that his newfound guilt and subsequent peace with society were

  only the beginning steps of a great journey that would take him places

  he could not yet imagine. "Something big is going to happen," he

  repeated, "and I sure wish you were here with me, Jenny."

  The blue Nevada sky had been armoring itself with dark storm clouds ever