The Memorist

Chapter 7

New York City

Thursday, April 24^th-6:00 p.m.

It had started to drizzle but Malachai Samuels still decided to walk back to his office. He’d just left a meeting with his lawyer, who’d assured him the police were close to exonerating him-there simply was no evidence that he had been involved with the theft of the memory stones last summer, although it was anyone’s guess when they’d formally close the investigation. It had been the end of a trying day but the walk uptown through Central Park was gratifying. Forcing the bastards who were keeping him under surveillance to trail him in the rain was one of the few pleasures he could take from the ignominy of his situation.

Strolling through the relative tranquility offered by the 700 acres enclosed by rough-hewn rock walls was part of his daily ritual. Although it was a vital part of the city, what Malachai appreciated was how little the park had changed since being designed in the mid 1800s when, just blocks away, his ancestors were founding the Phoenix Foundation to study reincarnation and transcendentalism. Being in Olmstead’s masterwork gave Malachai the illusion he was living in that other era.

When he allowed himself to think about it, it tortured him that he couldn’t access his past. He’d spent his whole adult life watching children bear the burden of memories they didn’t invite, and yet no matter how much effort he exerted, he couldn’t access a single forgotten thread. But he’d come so close when the memory stones had been found. Damn, he’d come close.

Exiting through Hunter’s Gate on 81st Street and Central Park West, Malachai continued north. His destination was just steps off the avenue-the Queen Anne style villa with gables, scrolled wrought-iron railing and a dozen gargoyles. Cast in the early evening shadows, the Phoenix Foundation-still housed in the same maisonette as the original nineteenth century club-took on a grave appearance, as if overwhelmed by the weight of all that had gone on inside its walls: investigations into births, deaths, and murders; the synchronicity and parallels of lives lived and lost; and the complicated issues raised because of them.

On his way to his office, he glanced into an empty waiting room, relieved to see his assistant had been able to clear his calendar. He couldn’t send home a child in distress. To date, Malachai and his aunt, Dr. Beryl Talmage, the director of the Foundation, had seen over three thousand children suffering past life memory trauma and had helped almost all of them to some degree. Both trained psychologists, they believed their search for psychic DNA deserved serious attention and fought hard to keep their work free of populist faddism. Over the years, they’d seen the healing power of past life regression therapy with patients resistant to other forms of treatment. Seventy-five percent of the children who had come to the Foundation left within six months, their conflicts resolved. But it was the children he’d let down who plagued Malachai-like Meer, who was one of his greatest challenges and most disturbing failures.

He’d just sat down at his desk and was checking his messages to see if Jeremy Logan had called, when Beryl Talmage appeared in his doorway.

“So you’re back,” his aunt said. “How did the meeting go?”

Afflicted with MS, Beryl had been in a wheelchair off and on for the last two years but tonight the only sign of her illness was an ivory cane.

“You’re looking well,” he said.

“No news still? How can this investigation just go on and on?”

To a stranger, her comment might be interpreted as commiseration, but Malachai knew it for the indictment she’d intended it to be. Even though she believed completely in his innocence, she nonetheless blamed him for getting too involved in the search for the memory stones and bringing a scandal to the front door of the Foundation. The possibility that her co-director might be a thief and murderer had tarnished the reputation Beryl had nurtured for years.

“It’s not your life that’s been laid open. You’re not the one who-”

Beryl’s fingers tightened on her cane. “Are you asking me for pity?”

“I’ve surrendered my passport, opened my files, my correspondence, my bank accounts, virtually my entire private life-to men in badly cut suits and polyester shirts who are getting an inordinate amount of pleasure keeping me under their thumbs.” Rising, he walked to the window and drew back the edge of the heavy silken drape and wondered if one of them was sitting in one of those parked cars right now watching him. “Being under surveillance feels as if someone’s performing constant surgery on my soul.”

“Don’t be melodramatic.”

“I’m past needing your approval, Aunt Beryl, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t appreciate your support.”

“You have my support. You know that. For as long as you need it, both in public and private, but what I can’t do is pretend that-”

The phone rang, interrupting her.

Looking down at the caller ID, Malachai recognized Jeremy Logan’s number. “I’m sorry, but I’ve been waiting for this call all day.”

With a sad good-night and favoring her cane, Beryl left his office. Relieved to be going, he thought, and he couldn’t blame her.

“Did you meet with Meer? What happened when she saw the actual photograph of the box?” Jeremy asked in a rush once the two friends had exchanged greetings.

Malachai described Meer’s reaction.

“How upset was she?” Jeremy asked.

“You know how well your daughter controls her feelings.”

Like too many children of divorce, Meer had a strained relationship with the parent she blamed the most for the breakup-her father-and Malachai recognized the vestige of guilt he always heard in Jeremy’s voice when he discussed his daughter.

“Giving up her music, studying memory science, taking on this Memory Dome project-why?” Jeremy asked. “She’s devoted her life to proving that what she remembers about the music and the box is nothing but a false memory, and the harder she tries to deny-”

“Jeremy, this isn’t the way to work through how-”

“I hoped if she understood that the box was real, she’d finally let us help her. Couldn’t it be therapeutic if she came here and saw the gaming box for herself?”

“Of course. It could be the trigger we’ve never found. But she has to want to work on it and she’s long past that. Besides, she has an excuse-in a week construction begins on one of her exhibitions.”

“Work is always her excuse.”

“Give her time on this one. Seeing the photograph was a shock.”

“As was finding it. Along with the rest of what I found,” Jeremy said, and then told Malachai the stunning news about the letter that tied the chest to Beethoven and one of the lost memory tools.

“Are you saying the flute might still exist?” Malachai asked after he’d heard the whole story. “That it could still be where Beethoven hid it?” He tried to keep his voice composed, not wanting anyone, not even his old friend, to know how much this news meant to him.

“Extraordinary, isn’t it? I obtain information about a musical instrument purported to prompt past life memories from a letter hidden in an eighteenth-century gaming box. A box identical to an imaginary one my daughter’s been drawing since she was seven.”

“It’s serendipity…” Malachai said by rote. It was how he began the standard lecture he gave to every baffled parent whose child was haunted by past life memories, but tonight he was the one bewildered by the connections Jeremy had just laid out for him.

Extracting an antique deck of French gilt-edged cards from his desk drawer, he cut them once, then again, and then a third time. They were worth thousands of dollars; most collectors would have kept the treasure behind glass but Malachai liked to play with his toys. Usually it relaxed him. As he shuffled, the corners slapped against each other, making a sound that typically soothed him. Then, while asking Jeremy questions and taking note of his answers, Malachai performed a little sleight-of-hand for an invisible audience: he hid the king of diamonds in the center of the pack and with his next move revealed it at the top of the deck.

Although a technical success, the trick had failed him. Malachai was still tense. He’d lost one of the memory tools. He was not going to lose another. And Meer was going to be his insurance.