Forever (25 page)

'Here. Keep the change.' The Ghost put a
couple of dollars on the counter, picked up the coffee, blew on it,
and turned to glance out of the window. The rain was blasting down
from gunmetal clouds, hitting the plate glass like pellets and
distorting the flashing 'burlesque' and 'Girls Girls Girls' neons
across Eighth Avenue. Wet gusts blew in through the door with every
arriving customer.

Turning away from the window, The Ghost set
down the disposable cup and opened the New York Post.

As usual, the tabloid did not disappoint.
WEALTHY L.I. TYCOON MURDERED. BOMB BLAST NEAR TURKISH NATO BASE. TV
STAR SUICIDE ATTEMPT. STATE DEFICIT CRISIS DEEPENING. CITY TAX HIKE
IMMINENT.

Fools gotta learn about cash business, The
Ghost thought smugly. That way you don't pay no taxes . . .

OFF-DUTY COP STABBED IN BROOKLYN MUGGING.
MORE LAYOFFS LOOM IN BUSINESS WORLD. And, shunted to page 18, a
two-column headline: HIT-AND-RUN COMA VICTIM IDENTIFIED. Swiftly
The Ghost began to read:

Police yesterday identified last Thursday's
hit-and-run victim, whose identity had been withheld pending
notification of next-of-kin, as Aaron W. Kleinfelder, 49. of
Riverside Drive. Witnesses said the victim, a computer software
specialist, was crossing the intersection to his apartment building
at Riverside Drive and West 81st Street when he was run down by a
stolen delivery van.

EMS paramedics took Kleinfelder to St. Luke's -
Roosevelt Hospital. Doctors interviewed last night said he was
still in a coma but declined to speculate on the possibility of
complete recovery.

The Ghost closed the newspaper and stared
off into space. Damn! Why didn 't I read last Friday's paper or
call the hospital? A week after the fact's a fine time to discover
the mark's still alive. Christ. Talk about fucking up!

The Ghost expected to catch some flak, but
the client was full of surprises. There wasn't a word of complaint,
nor a single curse or threat, just that crisp authoritative voice
saying, 'You did right in letting us know.'

'How do you want me to handle this? I can
either finish him off in the hospital, or wait and see if he dies
anyway. I'll leave that up to you.'

There was a pause. Then: 'Don't do anything
yet, but keep tabs on his condition. Who knows? Could be, he'll be
out of it for seven days or seven years. Could even be, he'll die
before he ever wakes up. But if he does come out of his coma, take
care of him immediately. On the other hand, as long as he doesn't,
I don't see why there's any need to attract undue attention.'

'I'll check in with the hospital daily. That
way we won't have any more unpleasant surprises.'

'Good, and don't forget to keep me posted.'
And with that, the client rang off.

After hanging up. The Ghost deposited a
quarter, punched 411 for information, and asked for the number for
St. Luke's - Roosevelt. Called the hospital and said, 'Yeah. I need
to find out about a patient's condition?'

Near West Cornwall, Connecticut

Stephanie was waiting for Sammy with a giant
snifter of brandy when he came out of the bathroom. He was wearing
a borrowed white bathrobe and carried his carefully folded jacket
over one arm.

Stephanie proffered the snifter with all the
solemnity of a sacrament. 'Here. Drink.'

He eyed the giant glass with suspicion. 'And
what's this?' he asked, his nostrils twitching with tentative
little sniffs.

'A restorative,' she said gravely. 'For
getting soaked.'

Sammy swooped the snifter out of her hand
and took an appreciative sip. A moment later, he was smacking his
lips noisily. His face glowed and he positively beamed.

'Brrrrrandy!' He rolled the word lavishly on
his tongue. 'An elixir to feed the muses and warm the cockles of my
heart! Soon ye'll have me spoutin' off the old poets' -'

'Wal-rfo!' The screeches coming from the
brass cage at the far end of the room cut him off. 'Wal-do\ Waldo
wants a crackerV

Sammy dropped the brogue. 'Do you think,
Girlie,' he suggested hopefully, 'that a shot of brandy in his
water might - ah -shut him up?'

Stephanie stiffened. 'You will do nothing of
the kind. Now then. We've got a lot of things to discuss. Did you
bring them?' She looked at him questioningly.

'I have them right here, Girlie.' He lifted
his jacket.

'Good. Why don't we get comfy and sit over
there?'

Briskly she led the way, picking an unerring
path between all the furniture.

Empty, the grandly proportioned,
high-ceilinged room with its bookcases built into architectural
niches probably looked like some archbishop's crypt. But happily,
Carleton's eclectic mixture of lavish furnishings and the gew-gaws
he'd picked up on his travels un-museumed it, made it a virtual
maze one could get lost in - delightfully comfortable,
extravagantly cluttered, and utterly pleasing to the eye as well as
to all the other senses.

The sheer profusion of things staggered the
imagination.

The thousands of leather-bound books, many
first editions, bursting from the recessed shelves. The brilliant
palatial Turkey carpet glowing, like the rose window of a great
cathedral, on the floor. The shimmering blue-and-gold Lyonnaise
silk curtains, lavishly swagged and heavily tasselled, which were
drawn across the tall windows and which, back in the eighteenth
century, had graced a Habsburg's palace. And last there was the
splendid pair of identical lits a la Polonaise, both draped in
antique yellow silk and sprouting tattered ostrich plumes from
their coronas. They had come from the state bedchamber of a
chateau.

Stephanie plopped herself down on one and
indicated for Sammy to take the other.

A low table between the two beds held brass
lamps which spilled soft pools of light on tall stacks of paper,
each one consisting of hundreds of Xeroxed pages held together with
pink rubber bands. From the looks of them, they had all presumably
been read and carefully sorted into categories: manuscript,
transcribed interviews, copies of articles, documents, and God only
knew what else.

Sammy turned to Stephanie in amazement.
'Don't tell me. Girlie,' he said in astonishment. 'You've gone
through everything?'

She nodded, tugging off the black wig as she
talked. 'Gone through it, sorted it, studied it, you name it.'
Tossing the wig aside, she shook out her own strawberry-blonde hair
and used her fingertips to fluff it.

'But in just the past week?' Sammy looked
incredulous.

'What can I tell you? I'm a fast study.'

Sammy watched as she carefully removed first
one blue-tinted contact, and then the other. She put the lenses in
their plastic container and snapped it shut. Then she looked over
at him with her normal topaz gaze.

'Besides,' she demanded, 'what else is there
to do up here? Watch weeds grow? So -
voila!
I busied my
hands and occupied my mind. You're now looking at the life and
times of Lili Schneider.'

Again Sammy glanced at the stacks of paper.
'You know,' he said quietly, with a sorrowful little shake of his
head, 'when you consider the years of work that represents and you
realise how easily it could all have been destroyed -'

'Yes, and it almost was destroyed. Thank God
for Grandpa's almost pathological phobia of material getting lost
or a fire breaking out. Otherwise, he'd never have kept photostats
of everything up here.' Suddenly a veil seemed to shroud
Stephanie's eyes, and her voice grew hushed, it's ironic. Uncle
Sammy, isn't it? Grandpa's fear wasn't a phobia after all. It . . .
it's almost as if he'd had a premonition ... as though he'd been
able to see into the future!'

'Well, I only hope you'll be even more
careful than he was.'

'I intend to be.' She stared at Sammy. 'Why
do you think I have to remain "dead" for the time being? Not for
the fun of it, believe me.' She paused. 'Now then. Can I see the
passports?'

Sammy slid a buff-coloured, business-size
envelope out of his jacket and reached it across to her.

'You followed my instructions?'

'To the letter,' he replied, nodding. 'All
the names of girls who died within a week or two after birth in the
same year you were born. I got their names out of the Bergen,
Putnam, Dutchess, and Suffolk county newspaper obits of the time.
Then I got copies of their birth certificates from the respective
courthouses. Finally, I used them, and the pictures we took of you,
for the passport applications.'

'Good.'

She untucked the flap of the envelope,
extracted the brand new passports, and fanned them out on the bed
like playing cards. Selecting one at random, she opened it and
inspected the photo closely. Then she slowly flipped through the
others, carefully studying each one. Herself with dark-brown hair.
Red hair. Black hair and blonde. The redhead wore wire rims; the
one with the long black hair. Nana Mouskouri glasses.

She nodded to herself with satisfaction.
None of the pictures looked remotely like herself.

They'd better not, she thought. Because
Stephanie Merlin is dead. And as long as she remains dead, I'll he
alive.

'Well?' Sammy asked.

'Nice,' she said, tossing the last one
down.

He was silent for a moment. Then he said,
'May 1 ask something. Girlie?'

'Fire away.'

'All right.' He steepled his hands and
pressed the tips of his fingers against his lips. 'I asked myself,
"Sammy, why would your darling Stephanie need four different
identities instead of one?" So I thought about it and thought about
it. I racked my brains. And can you guess what conclusion I kept
coming to?' He leaned forward. 'That you don't need four passports
just to lay low. No. You wanted four, Girlie, because you've
decided to play gumshoe.' His voice dropped to a hoarser octave.
'Please, for my sake and yours, tell me I'm not right. Girlie.
Please. Tell me I've got it all wrong!'

She shrugged, a lazy feline gesture of
immense contradiction, one which gave away nothing, and yet
confirmed everything.

Feeling frailer than he had in a long, long
time, Sammy got up and went over to sit beside her. He took one of
her hands and raised it to his lips. 'Please, Girlie. I beg of you.
Let the authorities investigate this?'

'The authorities!' she jeered, and yanked
her hand back as if it had been scorched. 'For crying out loud,
Uncle Sammy! Get reall If they didn't do anything about this
before, why would they do something now?'

Her sudden fury disconcerted him, and his
face suffused with colour. 'Well, with Carleton's manuscript . . .
and these, these notes . . . ' he stammered, ' ... all this
evidence to back you up -'

'Evidence?' she demanded, her eyes hardening
into stony topaz jewels. 'Evidence of what? That Grandpa was
writing a book? No, Uncle Sammy. No." She shook her head. 'The only
real evidence there ever was is the evidence which caused that
massive explosion - and that's probably been cleaned up and
conveniently cleared away by now.'

'But. . . perhaps if you appealed to the
police . . . ?'

'Come on, Uncle Sammy. Isn't it time you
stopped fooling yourself? You yourself told me the fire department
attributed that explosion to a gas leak. Remember?' She laughed
softly. 'Only, there was no gas. I would have smelled it, and so
would Pham.' Her lips tightened into a thin hard line. 'I don't
care what the authorities said then, and I don't give a hoot what
they'd say now. All I know is, that explosion was no accident. It
was cold-blooded and premeditated. If you ask me, the quote,
authorities, unquote, are either covering up, or just don't
care.

He sighed again.

'Either that bomb - and it had to have been
a bomb. Uncle Sammy, it couldn't have been anything else - was
meant for Grandpa's research material and manuscript, or for me.
Most likely, it was meant to kill two birds with one stone: his
work and me.' Her eyes suddenly shone with tears. 'But instead of
getting me,'she moaned,'it got Pham!'

'Girlie . . . ' He put a hand on her
arm.

'I know Uncle Sammy! I know! She knuckled
away her tears and sniffled. 'You're going to say I shouldn't be
blaming myself. But Pham went in there because of me,' she said
guiltily, 'because I left my watch behind! My watch, for
chrissakes! He died because of my damned watch! Her tears coursed
in rivulets down her cheeks now. 'Oh God! Why did he have to be so
stubborn? I started to go in, but then the wire of my Walkman
snagged on the doorknob and he sailed right past me, calling out
that I should wait in the vestibule for him.' Stephanie's voice
dropped to a strained whisper. 'And all because he knew that if I
went to get it, I'd probably spend the rest of the afternoon
sorting through Grandpa's things.'

Sammy's voice was gentle. 'How many times do
I have to tell you, Girlie? What happened to Pham wasn't your
fault.'

But it was as if she hadn't heard.

'It was horrible, Uncle Sammy! Horrible! I
was right outside the parlour when . . . when it happened!'
Suddenly she flung her arms around his neck and clung to him for
dear life.

He held her, for once helpless, not knowing
what words of comfort to murmur. Her body heaved with sobs, and he
could feel her tears on his neck. 'It's all right,' he soothed,
patting her convulsively shuddering back. 'There . . . there now,
Girlie . . . '

It ... it was like ... a huge fireball!' She
sniffed and swallowed hard, it. . . blossomed right out into the
hall at me! If I hadn't raced out to the vestibule - ' A cry rose
in her throat and her voice faltered.

Still patting her back with one hand, Sammy
stroked her hair with the other, forehead to neck, forehead to
neck. 'You needn't go into it again, darling,' he soothed. 'The
important thing is, you escaped harm.'