An Affair Of Sorcerers

Chapter 4

It was Saturday morning, but I had the feeling that someone had a strong urge to get in touch with me; and my home telephone was unlisted, the number given to friends only. Deciding that it was best to get what I assumed would be the most disagreeable part of the day out of the way first, I went downtown to my university office to give Vincent Smathers a shot at me. It didn't take the Nobel laureate long to get there; I was only halfway through coffee and a bagel when he burst into the office.

The photographs I'd seen of him didn't do justice to his solid, athletic build. He was, according to his university biography, fifty-four years old, but he looked younger. His brown hair was thinning on top, long and wavy at the sides and back. His eyes were his most striking feature-a cold emerald green. The left eye was slightly cast, making it difficult to meet his gaze. At the moment, his face was the color of chalk. Dr. Vincent Smathers was a very angry man.

He barely managed to bring himself to a halt in front of my desk. He stood before me, fists clenched, trembling with rage. "What were yon doing in my private laboratory?" he growled in a deep, rasping baritone.

I swallowed the last of the bagel, washed it down with coffee, patted my month with a paper napkin. "I got lost looking for the men's room," I said. It was no way to talk to a Nobel winner, but I was feeling a bit surly myself.

Smathers' tongue worked its way back and forth across his lips until he finally found the words he wanted. "You're a liar!"

"Okay, okay," I said testily. "I was looking for you or Dr. Kee. I wanted to consult you on a professional matter."

He swallowed hard and finally managed to bring his voice under control; stripped of the distorting anger, it was deep and rich-almost hypnotic. "I believe my secretary informed you that neither Dr. Kee or I have time for such matters."

"I don't like doing business with other people's secretaries. You might have extended me a little professional courtesy."

"Courtesy!" he boomed. "The door to my laboratory was locked!"

"Not when I got there," I lied. "Talk to your keeper of the keys. The door was open when I walked by, so I just went up. The next thing I knew I was face to face with Fu Manchu."

"Do you realize you could have killed that man? You might have ruptured his spleen or his heart!"

"If I'd wanted to kill him, he'd be dead," I said quietly, trying to meet Smathers' curious, off-center gaze; he seemed to be looking at me first with one eye, then with the other. "The fact of the matter is that your helper got a bit pushy. I just pushed back. If you want to pursue the matter, file a complaint. Go see the Chancellor. He might like to find out what's so damn important to you that you feel the need to keep an entire floor locked behind two inches of steel."

That backed him up. He took his hands off the top of my desk and stiffened slightly. "I don't think there's any need for that," he said carefully. His gaze rose to a spot just above my head, then snapped back to my face. "We're both professionals. I have no desire to embarrass you, and quite frankly, I can't spare the time from my work that bringing formal charges against you would entail."

"What are you working on?" I asked casually.

"I didn't come over here to discuss my work, Frederickson."

"Sorry; I was just trying to make conversation. I can't help being curious as to what kind of research requires a human watchdog like the one that came after me."

Smathers made a nervous gesture with his hand. "If you must know, Dr. Kee and I are investigating some of the more bizarre human mental aberrations. On occasion we have potentially dangerous people on that floor. That's the reason for the security. Our assistant obviously thought you might have been one of our subjects."

I laughed. "You get a lot of crazy dwarfs up there, Doctor?"

The scientist didn't smile. "I repeat: the man simply thought he was doing his job."

"What's behind those locked doors, Dr. Smathers?"

His green eyes flashed. Smathers' apologetic number, not that good to begin with, was over. "None of your business. God, you have nerve! But then, I suppose a spy needs it."

"I wasn't spying," I said evenly. "I was looking for you."

"You will not come up there again, Dr. Frederickson!"

We stared at each other for a few moments across the narrow expanse of my desk. I was the one who finally broke the silence. "Interesting colleague you have. Did you know that Dr. Kee was an adviser to the Peoples' Liberation Army in North Korea? I understand he was a brainwashing specialist."

"That's slanderous," Smathers said, flushing. "Who told you that?"

"What difference does it make? It's just a rumor. Haven't you heard it?"

"I wouldn't pay attention to such a story."

"If Dr. Kee was in Korea, why try to cover it up? That war's long over."

Smathers' eyes narrowed and his voice dropped in pitch. "Why this sudden interest, Frederickson?"

"I have tremendous respect for anyone who wins a Nobel Prize," I said truthfully. "I simply wanted to meet you. It turns out you're a very secretive person. Of course, if you've got something to hide-"

"I have nothing to hide!" Smathers snapped. He paused, thoughtfully tapped his knuckles on the top of my desk. "All right," he continued with a slight air of resignation. "I knew when I invited Kee to work with me that he'd been in the Chinese Army during the Korean War. That fact was-and is-irrelevant; there are still people who would be very upset if they knew of it, and we thought it best to keep it to ourselves. Dr. Kee is an expert in induced aberrational psychology, and the only man in the world who knows enough about the subject to be able to assist me."

"How did the two of you get together?"

"You're interrogating me!"

"No, I'm not," I said easily. "I'm just curious; and you did say that you had nothing to hide."

Smathers was uncomfortable, but apparently felt he'd already said too much to stop. "I was attending a conference in Poland," he said defensively, staring at me with his cast eye. "It was made known to me through intermediaries that Dr. Kee was available and wished to come to the United States in order to work with me. I said that I was agreeable, and he joined me soon after that."

"Interesting," I said casually. "Are you still experimenting with sensory deprivation?"

"No! Why do you ask?"

I raised my eyebrows, said quietly, "It's what you won your Nobel for. Why shouldn't you still be working in the field?"

"Because the research is considered dangerous, and it's no longer approved of by my colleagues." The scientist hesitated; the focus of his eyes shifted until he seemed to be looking through me. I must have pushed the right button, because he suddenly started talking rapidly, with passion. "I was surrounded by fools!" he continued heatedly. "I was on the verge of a medical breakthrough as profound as the work they gave me the Nobel for."

"A cure for the common cold?"

"Don't mock me, Frederickson," Smathers said, breath whistling through his voice. "I'd almost discovered a cure for alcoholism. Alcoholism, like drug addiction, is primarily a psychological problem; despite the gross changes that take place in the body as a result of dependence, the problem is one of the mind. I can literally remold a mind, erase those problems-"

"By erasing the mind," I interrupted. "I've done a little reading on sensory deprivation. To put it simply, a man goes out of his mind; to be more precise, his mind goes out of him. You take away all of a man's sensory landmarks and he'll eventually become like a baby-with no past, present or future. He becomes extremely suggestible; brainwashed, you might say."

Smathers slapped his thigh in an impatient, angry gesture. "Don't use that archaic term with me! You're being hopelessly simplistic. To begin with, the minds of the people I'm talking about have been rendered useless anyway. These men and women are no good to themselves or to anyone else. So don't moralize to me!"

"The thought never crossed my mind, Doctor."

Smathers suddenly thrust his shoulders back and raised himself up ramrod straight. "You will not interfere in my affairs again, Frederickson," he murmured in a quiet growl. "If you do, I'll make certain you regret it. You've been warned."

He spun on his heel and strutted stiffly out of the room, slamming the door behind him. I crumpled my coffee container and tossed it toward the wastebasket. I missed.

The confrontation with Smathers out of the way, I wanted to shift cases and see Esteban Morales. I drove over to Garth's precinct station and had already parked before I remembered that he was away for the weekend. I might have been able to get in to see Esteban on my own, but I didn't want to talk to the healer until I'd spoken with Garth-and I didn't want to talk to Eric Jordon until I'd heard what Esteban had to say. That seemed to leave me the weekend-almost. I went to the 42nd Street library and checked through the newspaper files for more information on the murder of Dr. Robert Samuels, but there wasn't anything important in the papers that I hadn't already learned from Janet and Senator Younger. I took a workout at the New York Athletic Club, cooked in the sauna for a half hour, then went to a movie.

I was in the middle of the Sunday Times Arts and Leisure section when Winston Kellogg called me.

"Good morning, Mongo," Kellogg said in his clipped British accent that ten years of living in Boston had done nothing to alter. "I have some information for you."

"I said inexpensive snooping, Winston; not haphazard. What the hell can you find out about a man in a day and a half, on the weekend?"

"Oh, you'd be surprised," Winston said, a faint trace of hurt in his voice.

"Try me," I said drily, activating my desk recorder and fastening the suction-cup attachment to the telephone receiver.

"Well, after my first lead, the best information I got was from contacts I have in New York and L.A. Very colorful stuff." He sniffed. "You will pay for my phone calls, I trust?"

"C'mon, Winston. For Christ's sake, I'll pay for the calls. And I apologize for questioning the quality of your investigation. Okay?"

"Very well," he said archly. "First of all, Smathers was eased out of Harvard because he insisted on continuing a research program the administration didn't approve of. He was into something called sensory deprivation."

"It doesn't surprise me. Look, Winston; keep on digging. You can even spend some-"

"Hey, wait a minute! I haven't gotten to the juicy parts yet."

Rumors. I felt my stomach muscles tighten. "Go ahead." I said quietly.

"Your man's a chicken hawk."

"Jesus," I whispered. "He likes boys?"

"Oh, not just boys. He likes little girls too; and big boys and big girls. He may like goats and sheep, for all I know. He doesn't seem to have any particular preference."

"A real swordsman, huh?"

"That's what I'm told. One of my police sources tells me that Smathers' name turned up on a list of a very select clientele for one of the kinkiest cathouses you've ever heard of. I'll bet it beats anything you've got in New York. Anyway, the man's got some far-out sexual tastes; kids, necrophilia-you name it and he's probably tried it."

"Winston," I said softly, "are you serious?"

"Yes, Mongo, I'm afraid I am. You'll be getting my report-and some interesting photostats-in the mail. None of this stuff I'm giving you ever made the papers because of Smathers' reputation in the scientific community; he was protected. It seems he's a specialist in kinky behavior-but he's a goddamn weirdo himself. Watch yourself, my friend; I don't know how he feels about dwarfs."

Kellogg gave me some more particulars while I sat and listened, my eyes closed, breathing rapid with tension and distaste. When he'd finished, I thanked him and hung up. I took the tape off the machine and locked it in the small safe I kept in the apartment. Then I took a hot bath; I felt dirty.

On the spur of the moment, I decided to clean out my head by spending the afternoon reading poetry and listening to Medieval music at The Cloisters. When I passed 4D, I suddenly remembered that I had a third client, of sorts-one who'd hired me for fifty-seven cents. With luck, I hoped I could get that matter out of the way fast. I'd ring the bell, look for an invitation from Marlowe for coffee-and hope that Kathy would tell me it had all been a joke and demand her money back. I decided I'd keep a nickel just to teach her a lesson.

If the fear was still in Kathy's eyes, I'd ask Marlowe to let me take his daughter to the movies. One way or another, I hoped to find out what was on the little girl's mind.

The exercise was wasted; there was no one home. I spent the afternoon at The Cloisters, then went down to the Village in the evening to play chess.

Someone was calling my name. It was a child's voice, crying and terrified, a small wave lapping at the shore of my consciousness.

Suddenly I was running down a long tunnel, slipping and falling on its soft, rubbery surface as I struggled to reach the small, frail figure at the other end. Kathy's image seemed to recede with each step I took, and still I ran. She was dressed in a long, flowing white gown buttoned to the neck and covered with strange, twisted shapes. Then time blinked and she was before me. As I started to reach out for her, Kathy burst into flame.

I sat bolt upright in bed, drenched in sweat. My first reaction was an immense surge of relief when I realized I had only been dreaming. Then came terror as I smelled smoke.

Or thought I smelled smoke. Part of the dream? I started to reach for my cigarettes, then froze: there was smoke coming from somewhere. I leaped out of bed and quickly searched the apartment, but could find nothing burning. I yanked open the door of the apartment and stepped out into the hall.

Smoke was seeping from beneath the door of Frank Marlowe's apartment.

I sprinted to the end of the hall and broke the firebox there, then ran back and tried the door to 4D. It was locked, and I didn't waste time knocking. I braced against the opposite wall, ran two steps forward, doubled up in the air and kicked out at the door, just above the lock. The door rattled on its hinges. I picked myself up off the floor and repeated the process. This time the door sprang open.

The first thing that hit me was the stench. The inside of Marlowe's apartment was filled with thick, greenish smoke and smelled like a sewer. There was a bright, furnace glow to my right, coming from the bedroom. I started toward it, then stopped when I saw Kathy lying on the couch. What she was wearing filled me with a different kind of terror; despite what seemed to be the vivid reality of the stench and heat, I was certain I had to be in my bed, still asleep.

Kathy was clothed in the same gown I'd seen in the dream.

I screwed my eyes shut, shouted at the top of my lungs and drove my left heel into my right shin. My voice sounded real, pain shot through my ankle-and Kathy was still lying unconscious on the couch when I opened my eyes.

The child was the only reality that mattered, and I pushed the dream dilemma out of my mind as I bent over her and put my ear to her chest. Her breathing seemed normal and her heartbeat was regular, but she was completely unconscious, not responsive to either my voice or my touch. I gathered her up in my arms and carried her out into the hall. I gently laid her down on the worn carpet, then hurried back into the apartment.

There was nothing I could do there. Covering my mouth and nose with a handkerchief, wincing against the furnace heat, I stood at the entrance to the bedroom and gazed in horror at the bed, which had become a funeral pyre. The naked, shriveling body of Frank Marlowe was barely discernible inside a deadly ring of greenish-white fire that was burning too bright, too steady, to be a normal blaze. It was a chemical fire.

Back out in the hall, I checked Kathy's vital signs again. They remained steady, but her eyes, when I lifted her lids, were glassy and unseeing. I shouted at one of the stunned onlookers to keep everybody away from her, then sprinted back to my apartment and threw on some clothes. The fire department still hadn't arrived by the time I got back. Ambulance service being what it is in New York City, I picked Kathy up in my arms and carried her down to the underground parking garage. I laid her across the back seat of my Volkswagen, then raced to the university Medical Center, horn blaring all the way. She was immediately admitted through Emergency, and I nervously sat down to wait.

A few hours later a young black doctor emerged from the inner sanctum. "Excuse me, Doctor," I said, grabbing his sleeve. "How's the little girl? Kathy Marlowe?"

The doctor was frail and walked with a slight limp. He had thick, curly black hair and large brownish-black eyes that weren't yet glazed over by the endless pain one encounters in a New York City hospital. His flesh tone was a glistening ebony. The name tag on his white-smock identified him as Dr. Joshua Greene. At the moment, he looked somewhat surprised to see a dwarf standing in front of him.

"Who're you?"

"My name's Frederickson."

The man's large, sensitive eyes narrowed. "I think I've heard of you; or I've seen your picture someplace."

"Never mind that. I asked how the girl is."

"Are you a relative?"

"No; friend of the family. I brought her in. Her father's dead, and I don't know how to get in touch with any other member of the family."

The doctor put his hand on my shoulder and guided me to a small alcove off the main corridor. I didn't like the way he walked and held his head; it was too sad, a little too desperate.

"My name is Greene," he said quietly. "We have … a problem with Kathy."

"What's the matter with her?" My throat felt dry and constricted; I could barely get the words out.

Greene shrugged his frail shoulders. "We really don't know," he said, his eyes clouding. "There's no sign of smoke inhalation, which was the first thing we looked for. Since then we've run a number of tests, but they're all inconclusive. There's no sign of any physical injury. She's just. . unconscious. She's stable at the moment, but there are indications she may not stay that way."

"You mean she hasn't regained consciousness at all?"

He shook his head. "The child is in a deep coma, and we don't know what's causing it."

"Can't you treat it?"

Greene's laugh was sharp and bitter, belied by the anguish in his eyes. "Treat what? Coma is only a symptom, and none of those marvelous machines we have in there can tell us what's causing it." He swallowed hard, licked his lips. "There must be something in her background-an allergy, or some obscure hereditary disease. That information is vital. If we could only contact a relative …"

"I'll see what I can do about finding one. What about trauma? Could severe emotional shock precipitate a coma?"

"Maybe," Greene said carefully. "But there'd have to be some other contributing factor."

"What about drugs?"

The doctor looked at me a long time, obviously thinking about the question. "There are certain drugs that can induce coma," he said at last. "But if that's the case here, we're in trouble; we haven't been able to detect any foreign substance-yet. If she was given something, we'd have to find out exactly what it was before we could reverse the effects. And I don't think we have much time." He paused and shook his head. "Why would anyone want to drug this little girl?"

I didn't know the answer to that question, any more than I knew why someone had wanted to roast her father. But I was convinced that that was the case, and I intended to find the answers.

"Do you still have the gown she was wearing when I brought her in?"

"The one with the odd pictures?"

"Right. Will you give it to me?"

"Why?"

"I'd rather not say right now, Doctor. But I think the symbols on that gown could mean something. If I'm right, they could provide a clue to what's wrong with Kathy."

"They're just designs," Greene said impatiently. "It's a child's nightgown. What could it possibly have to do with the girl's condition?"

"Maybe nothing. But we won't know for sure unless you give me the gown."

"I don't know," he said hesitantly. "We have. . procedures."

"That's your problem, Doctor," I said tersely. "You're the one who said we might not have much time."

He thought about it for a moment, then turned away, walked quickly down the corridor and disappeared through a swinging door. He reappeared a few minutes later with the gown wrapped in a plastic bag. I glanced at my watch: it was five thirty a.m. I was suddenly very tired, my senses drugged with the kind of hypertense, nervous exhaustion that is the mind's gambit to escape from pressure.

I felt cold, numb, disoriented; but most of all I felt fear for Kathy-and that was all I would need to keep me going. That fear would burn away the fog inside my mind. It had to. Like Frost's winter wanderer, I sensed that I had miles to go before I'd sleep.