Shift: A Novel

New York, NY

November 19, 1963

Chandler paced the floor of the SRO for all of five minutes after BC headed to Peggy Hitchcock’s apartment in his ridiculous getup, then grabbed one of the ex–FBI agent’s new blazers and headed out into the bright fall afternoon. An idea had come to him when BC showed him his beatnik costume. It was a long shot, but if it worked he’d be on his way to Naz before BC even got to Hitchcock’s home. And if it didn’t, he’d be back in the hotel before BC returned, none the wiser.

It was only a few blocks to Washington Square Park. The Village was another country to the one that existed north of Fourteenth Street, another world to Beacon Hill. Chandler had laughed uproariously at BC’s thrift store finds, yet they were tame compared to the outfits he saw here: men in vests that appeared to be made of bear fur, flared black leather pants that rode below what would have been the waistband of the underwear, had the people in question been wearing any. The only ties he saw were wrapped around foreheads, the only dresses were dashikis and sarongs, and just as likely to be on men as on women. At one point he saw a slim man in pressed chinos and starched white shirt and severely parted hair, but when he got closer he realized it was actually a woman, her breasts flattened by some kind of binding, her upper lip darkened with pencil. There were several interracial couples as well—black girls and white men, but also black men and white girls. Sweet-smelling home-rolled cigarettes were passed freely from hand to hand around the park’s central fountain. It was one big party, and Chandler was there to get in on the fun. Not marijuana, though. He needed something stronger.

He walked through the park searching for the right person. Finally he saw a young man sitting with a tall drum between his dungarees, the only thing that covered his skinny body in the nippy evening besides a length of light brown hair. The man’s eyes darted from place to place, as if he were watching butterflies or hummingbirds flit through the air. The sky was empty, though. The man was clearly hallucinating.

Chandler took off his tie and opened the top couple of buttons on his shirt, then ambled up to the man and sat down on the bench a few feet from him.

“Nice day, huh?”

The man’s head continued to dart this way and that.

“I said, nice day, isn’t it?”

The man looked over at him. “Oh, sorry, man. I didn’t realize you were real.”

You don’t know the half of it, Chandler thought. Aloud he said again, “It’s a nice day, isn’t it?”

“You think that changes things?”

“Beg pardon?”

“If you call the day nice? Do you think the sun hears you and decides to shine brighter? The wind decides to ease up just enough to rustle the leaves? The day don’t need any compliments from you, man. The day just is. All you got to be is in it.”

“Oh, uh, right.” Chandler paused. “Do you think maybe you could help me with that?”

“I don’t think you’re ready for my trip, man.” The man flicked the shiny lapel of BC’s jacket. “I think it’d blow the mind of a square like you.”

“You’d be surprised.”

It took Chandler a half hour more to convince Wally to give him a taste. There was just enough LSD in the grubby little square Wally pulled from his pocket to set Chandler’s mind a-tingle, but it was enough. He was able to push Wally to give him the rest of his stash—four more light hits—and then he wandered around the park, reaching into people’s minds to see if anyone was carrying. By the time he left he had six hits of LSD, as well as three hundred dollars in cash. He hailed a cab on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Washington Square North.

“Where to?” said the old Italian man behind the wheel.

“Washington, DC.”

“You mean Penn Station?”

“No,” Chandler said. “I want you to drive me to Washington, DC. Now.”

Chandler had never seen the gray-eyed man who stepped into the hallway of Song’s establishment, but he recognized him from the snippets he’d pulled from BC’s mind. This was the man who’d taken Naz.

The man jerked his pistol at Chandler. Chandler concentrated. The acid he’d scored in Washington Square Park was substantially weaker than the stuff Keller had been giving him, and he’d used a lot of it getting the cabbie to drive him out of New York City before ditching him at a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. He’d downed everything he had left ten minutes before he knocked on the front door of the Newport Place house. It would have to be enough. He forced his way into Ivelitsch’s mind and grabbed.

As Ivelitsch leveled his gun at Chandler, the weapon suddenly turned on its holder, hissing like a cobra. He screamed and threw it from his hands.

Chandler picked up the gun while Ivelitsch blinked in confusion—not just at what had happened with the gun, but how quickly Chandler retrieved it. He’d never seen a man move so fast.

As Chandler was aiming the gun at Ivelitsch he saw a flicker of movement to his right. Song, leaping for him with a knife in her hand. He reached, pulled, thrust.

Melchior had briefed Song on what to expect. She knew the pit that opened in the floor beneath her feet was just an illusion. But even so, the vision was too real to resist. She screamed as she fell into the void.

As Song fell to the carpet, Chandler pounced. He’d never struck a woman before, but he kicked her viciously in the head. Her skull smashed into the wainscoting and she lay inert.

Ivelitsch had recovered enough to charge. Chandler used the gun this time. He’d never shot anyone either, but he squeezed the trigger and a globe of blood burst from Ivelitsch’s shoulder. Ivelitsch slammed against the flowered wallpaper and slumped to the floor.

Chandler advanced with the gun extended. Ivelitsch’s eyes flickered up the hall, where Chul-moo’s bare legs protruded from the security booth. He saw no sign of Garrison or Junior, but it wasn’t difficult to imagine that they’d been similarly dispatched.

“Where is she?”

A trained professional, Ivelitsch didn’t react. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to his shoulder to stanch the flow of blood.

“Who?”

Chandler’s eyes narrowed, and he pushed as hard as he could. A wave of fire washed over Ivelitsch’s body and he screamed hysterically until Chandler relaxed. Even so, he continued rolling on the ground in an effort to douse the flames for several seconds, until Chandler kicked him onto his back and put the gun in his face.

“Where?”

Ivelitsch stared up into the face of Orpheus. It was implacable and otherworldly. The face of a man possessed by love and hatred. His flesh still scalded and he couldn’t believe he was alive.

“Wh-what are you?”

But Chandler didn’t respond. The answer to his question had floated to the top of Ivelitsch’s brain like a drowned corpse rising from the bottom of a lake.

A nightclub, a portly balding man. He pushed at Ivelitsch’s brain until he had a name, a location.

Jack Ruby.

The Carousel Club.

Dallas.

He brought the butt of the pistol down as hard as he could on Ivelitsch’s skull and, like an unplugged TV, the picture snapped to black.