Burial (11 page)

‘Did he get his autograph?' I asked her.

‘Harry — don't underestimate Martin, please. He's kind
of eccentric, but he's a brilliant man. He's a better sensitive than me. He can tune himself, almost It's fantastic to watch.'

‘Okay, then,' I agreed. ‘I'll give him a try.'

‘Don't look so disappointed.'

‘I'm trying my damndest not to.'

She checked her watch. ‘I have to get back to my class. It was good to see you again, Harry. Sorry I couldn't help you personally.'

‘Well, me too. How about dinner sometime? They opened this terrific Korean restaurant on 52nd Street, close to my office. Have you ever tasted
ojingu chim
?'

Amelia gave me a long, level look. ‘Why do I have the feeling that
ojingu chim
is going to be something awful?'

‘Come on, Amelia. What's awful about squid's bodies stuffed with pickled cabbage and chopped-up tentacles?'

She stood up and went to the door, and waited for me smiling, one hand shading her eyes. I paid the check and came out after her and stretched.

‘I still miss knowing you,' she said, lightly kissing my cheek. ‘But not that much.'

I called back at the Greenbergs' apartment before I attempted to get in touch with Martin Vaizey. When he answered the door, Michael looked sweaty and yellow, like a man with malaria. Karen was sitting by the window with a freshly-brewed jug of iced tea.

‘Any luck?' Michael asked me.

‘I don't know yet. Amelia wouldn't do it, she said she gave up mysticism years ago. But she gave me the name of a sensitive on Central Park West. Highly recommended, that's what she said.

I nodded towards the dining room. ‘How is it in there?'

‘Awful … cold, scary. She keeps singing some song. The psychiatrist said that if she doesn't show any signs of recovery by the end of the week, they're going to have to pull her out of there whether she throws a seizure or not.'

Karen came up. She was wearing a loose silk shirt of saffron yellow and a loose pair of silk pajama pants. Her hair was clipped back with yellow plastic barrettes. ‘Do you want some iced tea?' she asked me. She knew I didn't really want any; she was simply trying to show how concerned she was.

‘I'll find somebody, don't worry,' I told Michael, grasping his shoulder. ‘I guaranteed that I was going to clear your apartment, one way or another, and I will.'

I was on the point of leaving when I heard Naomi singing from the next room. Her voice was shrill and keening, with loud ululations at the end of every line. It went on, and on, echoing a little, and every line seemed to be different. I approached the half-open dining-room door and listened hard, but I couldn't make out a single word she was saying.

‘Is that Hebrew?' I asked Michael.

Michael shook his head. ‘It's no language that
I
ever heard before.'

‘How about you, Karen?'

Karen said, ‘Me neither.' But the singing went on and on, high and insistent; until at last Michael came forward and closed the door.

‘She was doing it all night,' he explained. ‘I can't take too much more of it.'

‘Will you do me one favour?' I asked him. ‘Will you record it for me? You have a tape-deck, don't you?'

‘You think it'll help?'

‘I don't know. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. It can't hurt, whatever.'

I gave Karen a peck on the cheek, squeezed Michael Greenberg by his sweaty hand, and then left the building and hailed a taxi. The cabbie had just arrived in New York from Swaziland or someplace like that, and he drove backwards and forwards across midtown for almost fifteen minutes before I discovered that he was looking for ‘Sanitary Parts Waste.'

‘Central Park West, for Christ's sake,' I snapped at him. I told him to stop on the corner by Radio City, climbed out, and gave him some interesting physiological ideas about what he could do with his blatant request for a tip. I walked the rest of the way. By the time I reached the Montmorency Building my shirt was clinging to my back and my boxer shorts had twisted themselves into a sumo-wrestler's loincloth. A dense hot sour-smelling smog covered everything. The park was bronze. Up above me reared the forbidding bulk of the Montmorency Building, an uglier cousin of the Dakota, all red brick and mansard roofs and cupolas and gargoyles. A plaque on the wall announced that it was the first apartment building in New York to have been wired for electric light

Inside the mahogany swing doors, I was met by semi-darkness and a deep refrigerated chill. A large circular table stood in the centre of the brown-and-white mosaic floor, and in the centre of the table there was an extravagant arrangement of huge white arum lilies. I had the feeling that I had entered the foyer of a funeral parlour, rather than somebody's home. On the far side of the foyer, there was a small niche in the panelling, in which a sallow potato-faced man with ears like a troll was smoking a bright green cigar and reading the sports section.

I approached the niche and rapped on the ledge. ‘Can you help me? I'm looking for Mr Vaizey.'

The man took the cigar out of his mouth with an exaggerated flourish. ‘Do you have an appointment?'

‘No, I don't. But if you call him and say that I'm a friend of Amelia Wakeman, then I don't think there'll be any kind of problem.'

‘Mr Vaizey don't see nobody without no appointment. Strict instructions.'

‘Will you just call him, please?'

‘Well I don't know. He's not too keen on being disturbed none.'

I leaned on the ledge. ‘You want a shit-hot tip for the 4 o'clock or what?'

The concierge narrowed his eyes and blew smoke out of his nostrils. ‘Who
are
you?' he wanted to know.

‘Harry Erskine, Erskine the Incredible — palmistry, card-divining, tea-leaf interpretation, astrology, phrenology, numerology, bumps read, sooths said.'

The concierge rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling, presumably in the general direction of Martin Vaizey's apartment ‘You're another one of these clairvoyant characters, huh? What's this, the annual fortune-teller's get-together?'

‘You want the tip or what?'

The concierge didn't answer, but punched out a number on his telephone. After a while, he said, ‘Sorry to disturb you, Mr Vaizey, but I got somebody called Bearskin down here, wants to talk to you.'

‘Erskine!' I hissed, in a stage whisper. ‘A friend of Amelia Wakeman!'

The concierge conveyed this revised message upstairs; waited; and then nodded.

‘He'll see you,' he said. ‘Apartment 717.'

I walked toward the elevators, and pressed 7. The concierge stuck his head out of his niche and called, ‘Hey!' in an echoing voice. ‘What about that tip?'

‘Oh … don't bet on Perfect Favour.'

‘I wouldn't've bet on Perfect Favour anyway. Everybody knows that nag is only one race away from the glue factory. I want to know what's going to win, not what's going to lose.'

‘Don't we all, friend,' I smiled, and rattled open the elevator gates. ‘Don't we all.'

To my surprise, Martin Vaizey was waiting for me in the corridor when I appeared. I had imagined one of those roly-poly asthmatic types with plastered-down hair and a
purple silk bathrobe, rather like Zero Mostel in
The Producers
. Instead, I was greeted by a very tall, heavily-built man with wavy grey hair and a big open face, wearing a green plaid short-sleeved shirt, and jungle-green slacks and open-toed sandals.

‘Mr Erskine, come on in.'

He led me into a large, airy apartment, decorated like a feature for
Architectural Digest
. You know the kind of thing — glass-topped tables with arrangements of marble pyramids and expensive books about artists you've never heard of, pale velvet drapes with fancy swags and tie-backs, exquisite flower-arrangements and a couple of inexplicable abstract paintings that look like somebody's digestion rebelling against a double portion of crab claws in black bean sauce.

‘Attractive place,' I told him.

‘I was lucky. It used to belong to my parents. Would you care for a drink? You look hot.'

‘Is that a jug of margarita I see before me?' I asked him, nodding towards a collection of elegant Swedish crystal on an elegant silver Swedish tray.

‘Sorry, no, it's passion-fruit crush. I don't drink alcohol. It disturbs my sensitivity.'

‘Yes, well, I guess it disturbs everybody's sensitivity. That's what it's for.'

Martin Vaizey sat down on the white hide couch opposite me, and crossed his legs.

‘As a matter of fact, Mr Erskine, Amelia called me from the school. She told me to expect you. She also gave me some idea of what it was you wanted.'

‘Did she tell you how serious it was?'

‘It's obviously too serious for you to be able to handle it on your own.'

‘Mr Vaizey,' I told him. ‘I'm a fortune-teller, — a freelance consultant in future options. The skills I have are showmanship,
observation, a tireless ear, and the ability to tell anxious menopausal women exactly what they want to hear.'

Martin Vaizey slowly nodded. ‘Those are not inconsiderable skills.'

‘I didn't say they were. But they don't include psychic sensitivity. I know that there are spirits all around us, just longing to get in touch, but whatever it takes to talk to them, I simply don't have it. I'm like Alexander Graham Bell's mother. How can I call him up and ask him if he's invented the telephone yet? I don't have the wherewithal.'

Martin Vaizey steepled his fingers in front of his face and looked at me intently.
He covered his face so that onlie ye Eyes look'd out.
‘You're honest, at least,' he told me, ‘and even on
my
side of the business, you don't find much of that.'

I didn't know whether I should have been insulted by that remark or not. Probably yes. But right at this moment, I needed Martin Vaizey's assistance a whole lot more than I needed my professional pride, so I decided to say nothing. I gave him my famous mail-slot grin instead, and nodded stiffly.

‘Do you know why Amelia wouldn't help you herself?' asked Martin Vaizey.

‘She said she'd given it up. You know, contacting the spirits, stuff like that. Besides, she and I had a thing going once. It was a long time ago, but it didn't end too happily. I guess she didn't want to risk an action replay.'

Martin Vaizey nodded, as if Amelia had already told him that the reason for her refusal was partly personal. ‘She also said that what you were asking her to do sounded dangerous.'

I raised an eyebrow. ‘
Dangerous
? Is that what she said?'

‘Mr Erskine … all spirit contact is dangerous, to a greater or less extent. Even
you
should know that.'

‘Well with this particular case, with Naomi Greenberg, I guess there could be some kind of minor risk involved. But as you say, there's always a risk, pretty much, when you
contact the spirits. I mean, they're not all cheerful, well-meaning souls, are they?'

Martin Vaizey took a long, patient breath. ‘I am not an amateur, Mr Erskine. I have seen and talked to spirits that would astonish you; and I have been seeing them and talking to them for nearly forty years.'

He poured himself a glass of passion-fruit crush. He didn't offer any to me — not that I wanted any. I guess that proved he
was
psychically sensitive, after all.

‘Let me tell you a little about myself, Mr Erskine. I first discovered that I was a sensitive when I was only five years old. My ten-year-old brother Samuel died of pneumonia the day before my fifth birthday. But — even after his funeral — I continued to see him in his room, and talk to him.

‘Our relationship continued for years, and each time he appeared his image became clearer, until it was hard to tell that I wasn't speaking to a real boy. Only the faint images of the bedside light that shone right through his body showed that he was a spirit.

‘Samuel introduced me to scores of other spirits, some of them clear, some very faint — some so old that they were nothing more than creaking voices in the darkness. He showed me a world that exists beyond death; what you might call the landscape of immortality. It's very desolate sometimes, but at other times it's very beautiful — almost picture-postcard beautiful. The sort of heaven that over-enthusiastic young Catholic girls like to imagine. It's
always
strange.

‘I wasn't often afraid; although some of the very old voices were quite sinister. I wasn't afraid of my brother, of course, because he never grew older than ten, and he visited me nearly every day. One evening my father caught me talking to him in my room. Samuel vanished, but my father had caught the briefest glimpse of him. It nearly drove my father insane, but when I explained, he began to calm
down. I suspect that my father may have been slightly sensitive, too — and that I inherited my sensitivity from him.

‘He didn't say anything else, and he never asked me to get in touch with my brother on his behalf. But he bought me some books on psychic skills and psychic phenomena; and without saying a word he encouraged me to develop my sensitivity, and to learn how to use it with skill, and above all with accuracy. My father believed that whatever natural gifts one had, however arcane, one should stretch them to the utmost.'

I sat back. I didn't know whether I believed any of this or not The landscape of immortality? Creaking voices in the darkness?

‘You're sceptical,' said Martin Vaizey.

‘Are you surprised? You're talking more like me than me.'

‘Perhaps I am. But if you really want to know what's troubling Mrs Greenberg, then I'm sure I can help you. It's my forté, identifying the spirits that are troubling people, and bringing them into the open. Most of the time, people aren't aware that spirits are trying to get in touch with them. They feel a sense of irritation, perhaps; or discontent, without even realizing that a spirit in the spirit-world is doing everything it possibly can to attract their attention. For instance, there is a spirit that is troubling you.