Halloweenland

by Al Sarrantonio

  “Yes.”

  “Call me at this number tomorrow morning and I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And call at a reasonable time—say ten a.m.”

  “You got it.”

  The call ended in Chase’s laugh and then yawn.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  The next morning, after a fitful night alternating between bouts of sleep during which he dreamed of alcohol, and insomniac stretches during which he sat in bed and thought about alcohol, he arose soaked in sweat and realized it was Halloween. An electronic bell the mayor had installed in the garret of City Hall proclaimed the day precisely at eight, with eight funereal bongs. At twelve noon the farce would be repeated. The Orangefield Herald had tried to mount a mild campaign against what they had called “ghoulish tendencies,” but it had come to nothing, since the mayor’s brother owned the paper. Ted Bright had gotten that part right. The people and especially the businesses of Orangefield loved it because it was good for business—and whatever was good for the almighty buck in Orangefield never failed to fly.

  Sure enough the date icon on Grant’s computer screen seconded the motion: it was the thirty-first of October.

  “Shit,” Grant said.

  He automatically reached for a cigarette, found the pack in his shirt pocket (deliberately) empty, and cursed again, balling the fragrant pack into a ball and throwing it at the wall.

  He called Murray Chase, risking the cop’s ire.

  “Hey, Bill, for Pete’s sake, it’s—”

  “It’s important, Murray.”

  “Gimme what you want.”

  Grant told him.

  “You gotta realize this guy might be teaching an early class. I’ll call you when I know something.”

  “Thanks.”

  Ten minutes later the phone rang, and Grant pushed the talk button, holding his breath.

  “I got him, but it may take him a bit to get what you want. I gave him your number so he can call you himself. His name’s Professor Jeff Harmon.”

  “Thanks again.”

  But Chase had already hung up.

  Grant dressed, put the fully charged phone in his pocket and drove to a diner to fill himself with bacon and eggs. He didn’t look at the Dewar’s bottle on the way out. He drank three cups of coffee, and it tasted like turpentine in his mouth. All he wanted was a drink.

  He willed the phone to ring but nothing happened.

  Near the diner was a newsstand, and he stopped there and bought a package of cigarettes. There were carved pumpkins lining the counter of the stand. As the attendant handed him the cigarettes, Grant nearly tore the cellophane off and had a butt lit as soon as it was in his mouth.

  “One out of two ain’t bad, Malone,” he mumbled.

  Still he willed the phone to ring, but it was silent.

  He knew what would happen if he waited around doing nothing. He would smoke most of the cigarettes, then he would march into the nearest bar as soon as the phony clock tower in City Hall struck twelve gloomy bell peels.

  Then he would proceed to get very drunk.

  “This one’s for you, Malone.”

  He threw the half-finished cigarette down and climbed into his car, turning it toward the highway.

  He barely glanced to either side as he drove out of town. He already knew what he would see: a barrage of orange fruit, face after face carved into grotesque grins. Every shop in town put their pumpkins out first thing in the morning, and tonight as darkness fell the air would be filled with the spice of thousands of burning pumpkin guts. Every house had not one but two or three or twenty pumpkins. Each street was a riot of Halloween decorations: house-long webs with spiders that jangled down as the unwary walked through what looked to be the one open spot; Frankensteins sewn together with mechanical and electronic parts, which growled GRRRRRRRR! and reached out to grab you as you passed; bats on wires that danced around one another; the howl of wolves instead of door chimes when you pushed a front door button. Blocks had contests for best decorations and best lights (orange and white that flashed “Happy Halloween” in letters two feet high; lights strung in trees to look like rain and lightning; light shows strung over three houses running, coordinated by computer). Every year it got worse, became bigger. Everyone loved it.

  And the trick-or-treaters—they started earlier every year, the kindergartners out way before dark, and no curfew until midnight. They wore costumes now that looked like designer clothing: rapper outfits complete with bling, little girls as runway models, space creatures designed by special effects experts (complete with more electronics and lights).

  Grant looked at none of it and didn’t take his eyes off the road until he was on the Northway.

  He took the north ramp, thinking to drive until he was tired of it. The trees of the Adirondacks were in last full glory: a riot of bright orange and red leaves that outshone even the pumpkin-suffused town of Orangefield. There were some stretches where the foliage would be spectacular.

  The phone in his pocket suddenly rang, a harsh chirping sound.

  Grant simultaneously slowed from 65 miles per hour while fishing the phone from his pocket. He flipped it open as he came to a stop on the shoulder of the road.

  “Yes?” he said, pushing the talk button.

  In his haste he had jabbed the end button instead.

  “Shit!”

  The phone rang again a moment later, and Grant carefully pressed the talk button.

  “Is this Detective Grant?” a thin, reedy voice said.

  “Yes, it is. Professor Harmon?”

  “Yes. But I’m a little confused. I had a talk with a New York City policeman this morning—”

  “Yes, he said you’d call me directly.”

  “The information you’re asking for, I can’t release. There’s student confidentiality involved—”

  “Didn’t Lieutenant Chase tell you it was important?”

  “That’s really beside the point. We have university procedures that prohibit us from releasing any student information to anyone but the student. Even their own parents can’t access their own sons’ or daughters’ information.”

  “That’s insane! You have to tell me—”

  “It’s all tied up with federal law, Detective. We could actually lose funding if we broke procedure on something like this. Even Columbia Law School is bound by it.” He gave a short laugh.

  “Professor Harmon, I can’t tell you how important—”

  Grant noted the rising hysteria in his own voice.

  “I’m very sorry, Detective. There’s nothing I can do.”

  “You said Columbia Law School, right?” he nearly shouted.

  The phone went dead.

  Grant sat looking at the phone, a useless object in his hand, and then he jammed it onto the seat beside him.

  He viciously turned the engine on, gunned it as he threw it into drive, and pulled out onto the Northway, cutting off a tractor trailer. The truck threw its brakes into a scream as Grant slammed ahead, pulling into the left lane and looking for a turnaround.

  He found one, and as he completed the U-turn and pushed the pedal to the floor he flipped open his glove compartment, took out what was in there, and put it in his shoulder holster.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  He entered the Columbia campus after leaving the car in what must have been the last parking spot in New York City, on 116th Street. There were some students in costume, a party going on in the grassy area in front of the domed Low Memorial Library. He asked a girl dressed like a vampire where the Law School was located. She asked a companion dressed like a flying monkey from The Wizard of Oz, who hitched his thumb to the right.

  “Walk between Philosophy and Kent and across the sculpture area. It’s on the east campus, over Amsterdam Avenue. Jerome Greene Hall. You can’t miss it. It looks like a friggin’ toaster.”

  Grant did as he was told, passing some incredibly ugly sculptures. He entered the building. An atrium cu
t through the building from top to bottom, letting in a lot of light. He asked a few passing students where he might find Harmon, with no success, walked down to the second floor, which looked like an airport lounge with a café, quickly dismounted the ceremonial staircase to the first floor, consulted a roster behind glass on the wall and found Harmon’s office number. He got lost in a maze of classrooms and lecture halls but finally found it, tucked away next to a stairwell.

  The door was ajar and he pushed it open.

  “Are you Professor Harmon?”

  A lanky man with a mop of reddish hair swiveled his chair away from the computer screen he had been hunched over and said with a quizzical, almost bored look, “Yes?”

  Grant removed his .38 from its holster, toed the door shut behind him and stepped forward, putting the gun to Harmon’s neck.

  “Hey, is this one of Dan’s jokes—?”

  “No joke. My name is Grant. I spoke to you on the phone four hours ago. You know what I want.”

  Harmon began to open his mouth to protest, but when Grant pressed the muzzle of the .38 harder into his neck he kept his mouth shut and lost most of his color.

  “I don’t want to hear any bullshit about confidentiality,” Grant said. “And don’t faint. Let’s go.”

  Harmon turned back to the computer, pulled up a new screen that said “Student Records,” and punched in a code. Another screen came up telling him that he had been granted access.

  “What was the name of that paper again?” Harmon said. He began to wheeze and complained, “I’m not going to faint but I do have asthma.”

  “Then take care of it,” Grant ordered.

  Harmon pulled out an inhaler from his pocket and shoved it into his mouth, taking a deep breath. He put it away and Grant told him the name of the thesis.

  “I don’t give a shit who wrote it, I don’t give a shit about anything but this reference on this page.” Grant shoved the piece of paper he had written the information on.

  Harmon ran his fingers over the keyboard, squinted at the screen, tapped more keys.

  The screen went dark, then the name of the thesis came up, with a few lines of information under it.

  “It’s not online,” Harmon reported. “The author, Anne Simmons, never turned in the final version. And she didn’t complete her course work.”

  Grant pushed the muzzle harder into Harmon’s neck. “What does that mean?”

  “It means the thesis hasn’t been published, so we can’t look at it here.”

  Harmon slowly looked up at Grant. “Why are you doing this?”

  Grant lowered the gun. “It’s very important.”

  Harmon studied him for a moment. He had regained his color, and wore a pensive expression. “I’ve watched a lot of cop shows, Detective, and either you’re nuts, or what you say is true. If you promise not to point that gun at me again I’ll help you. For a price.”

  Grant opened his mouth but Harmon was already out of his chair, putting on his jacket. “There will be a copy in her advisor’s office. Either on computer or in manuscript. You’re lucky—he’s a good friend of mine.”

  Grant holstered his gun and followed Harmon out the door and down the corridor.

  Harmon stopped in front of an adjacent office and rattled the doorknob.

  “Dan?” He banged on the door. “Dan, open up!”

  A slouching young man who was passing by said, “Law and Civilization, lecture hall one-twelve. I just cut it.”

  He continued his slouching shuffle down the hall.

  Grant followed Harmon in a run to the stairs.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Grant was reminded of the lecture hall in The Paper Chase. It was half-full with half-asleep-looking students, but even the most bored of them had an open notebook and was holding a pen in his or her hand.

  Harmon marched to the lectern and said something to the short, rotund teacher, who stopped in midsentence and followed Harmon out of the hall. At the doorway the teacher turned and said to the class, “We’ll pick it up next time.”

  The teacher, who was introduced as Dan Stein, looked Grant up and down and said, “You’re really a cop?”

  Grant opened his jacket and showed him his gun.

  “Hey!” Stein said. “We can put this in the teleplay!”

  “Dan and I are writing a teleplay for Law and Order,” Harmon explained as they went back to Stein’s office. He looked suddenly sheepish. “It’s not sold, yet, just on spec. I’m sorry, but that’s all I could think about while you held your police special to my neck.”

  Stein’s eyes went wide. “He held it to your neck?”

  Harmon waved a hand in dismissal. “We’ll use it in the teleplay, Dan. Open the door.”

  Stein fumbled his keys out and opened the door. They entered a cluttered office with papers and books stacked everywhere.

  “We need Anne Simmons’ thesis.”

  “Who?” Stein said. He frowned.

  “Two semesters ago. She didn’t complete.”

  “Wow, two semesters. I can’t remember them a week after they’re gone. We’ll check the machine.”

  They followed him around a wall of law books topped with stacks of spiral notebooks at a precarious angle. Behind the wall was a desk covered in junk—pens and pencils, more notebooks, stacks of loose papers, more law books, thriller novels—and in the midst of it all the largest computer screen Grant had ever seen.

  “Great for DVDs, when I can’t stand grading anymore,” Stein commented, as he pushed a button hidden behind a pile of books. There was an uneventful moment and then the screen filled with what looked like a homemade movie, a handheld camera recording a flight down a concrete set of steps in what looked like Central Park.

  Stein uncovered his keyboard and tapped some keys. “We filmed part of the teleplay, borrowed some film students,” he said.

  The screen went blank, then bright blue, hurting Grant’s eyes. Then a white screen came up with a cursor in the upper left corner.

  “What was the name again?” Stein asked.

  Harmon told him.

  Stein typed it in.

  A name came up, followed by rows of information.

  “Hey,” Stein said, suddenly wary, partly covering the screen with his hands, “does Mr. Detective here know about the confidentiality laws?”

  Harmon said, sighing, “It’s all right, Dan.”

  Stein shrugged and pushed his face close to the screen.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “What?” Harmon replied.

  “It says it’s here. She never finished it, right?”

  “Correct,” Harmon said.

  “Then all we have to do is find it,” Stein said, sweeping his hands around the room, the endless stacks.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  “Jeez, Dan, haven’t you ever heard of organization?” Harmon said, after a half hour of plowing through one stack of old papers. They had each taken a quadrant, leaving the least likely corner of the room (“Really old stuff,” Stein had explained) for last.

  Stein laughed. “I took a course in Labor Organization once,” he said. “They gave me the choice of dropping out or flunking.”

  Grant threw aside a bound thesis titled “Labor Union Strife of the 1960s and Its Long-Term Effect on the American Economy” and picked up another called “The Rembrandt Effect: Labor Law in Seventeenth Century Holland.”

  “Don’t you remember anything about Anne Simmons?” Harmon asked Stein.

  There was silence, then Stein said, “No. Oh, wait, yes. She was either tall and thin with blond hair, or short and heavy with blond hair.”

  “You’re sure she was a blonde?” Harmon said.

  “No.”

  Grant looked at his watch. “Would you two screenwriters please get back to work?”

  “You will promise to let us use you as a consultant, right?” Stein asked.

  “If you find what I want, you can pick my brains clean.”

  “Cool.”

/>   There was the sound of papers shuffled, riffled, the thump of theses tossed aside.

  After another half hour the three of them stood in the midst of a sea of discarded paper staring at the remaining corner of the room.

  “How old?” Harmon asked.

  “Well, there’s always the chance it was misfiled.”

  Grant stepped forward and grabbed the top of the nearest pile, and his two companions dug in beside him.

  Twenty minutes later Stein announced, “I’ve got it.”

  The two others stopped immediately and looked over the short man’s shoulders. He held in his hand a marooncolored binder with a typed sticker on the cover which read: “The Treatment of the Disabled and Nonconformist in America, a Legal History” and under that “by Anne Simmons.”

  “This is important?” Stein laughed, and Grant tore the thesis out of his hand and pulled it open. He quickly thumbed to page seventy-six and moved his index finger down to the footnote number, which was at the end of a long sentence. His heart pounding, he tore his finger back to the beginning: “. . . and Gina, the Otherworldly Little Lady, who, her father claimed, had visited a land beyond the grave and then returned to the land of the living. Managed by her father, she appeared on talk shows before abruptly disappearing into the strange world of the carnival freak. Whether she is catatonic or delusional, her rights were obviously abused, and as of this writing she is a member of a team of carnival attractions owned by Carperon, Inc., a midwest purveyor of traveling shows, the most recent of which, Halloweenland, owned and operated by a so-called Mr. Dickens, whose real name . . .”

  Grant read the name, dropped the thesis and turned toward the door.

  “Hey, Detective, you okay?” Stein asked.

  Harmon voiced concern and curiosity. “Detective Grant? What does it mean?”

  “It means I go back to where I started.”

  Behind him, as he ran for the stairs and his car, he heard Stein utter, “Wow! We can use that line in the teleplay!”