Holy Terror (15 page)

Sidney nodded sympathetically and Conor found
himself watching him nod. His eyes were unfocused as if he were staring not at Conor's face but at the creeper-covered wall just behind Conor's chair.

‘You
thought
you were too suspicious. You
thought
you were too wary. But you forget that it's very comfortable, going into a trance, and it doesn't take long for you to feel that you don't care whether or not you are going into a trance or not, you recognize that your suspicions and your hostility are quite unfounded.

‘Of course you know you will never let anybody put you into a deep trance again but a light trance is very comfortable. You can allow yourself to be taken into a light trance while still staying alert

‘And

‘Doing your job properly

‘And

‘After all a light trance is very, very comfortable. In fact it's unbelievable how comfortable it is, how restful. You don't have to move or talk or let anything bother you.'

Conor couldn't take his eyes off Sidney's nodding head. He knew where he was. He knew that he was here, sitting at the lunch table with Sidney and Eleanor, and yet he wasn't.

‘You don't want to go into another trance, do you?' said Sidney. ‘You know that you would much prefer to be doing something else

‘And

‘While you're thinking about that, there's something else, isn't there? So why don't you look at it?'

Conor felt strangely light-headed. He turned toward the restaurant door and there was Lacey in
the kitchen. The table was covered in newspaper and she was mixing paint.

‘Lacey?' he said. She turned and smiled at him, and brushed a wispy hair away from her face with the back of her hand. ‘Did you paint the bedroom door yet?'

She shook her head. Conor could hear music in the background, and traffic.

Sidney said, ‘Lacey … that's your girlfriend?'

‘That's right. She's been painting the bedroom.'

‘Where is she now, Conor?'

‘There … in the kitchen. She's mixing paints.'

‘Maybe she needs some help. Why don't you take her that paintbrush?'

Sidney pointed to the large paintbrush on the table in front of him. Conor picked it up, pushed back his chair, and walked across to the restaurant door and right inside. He laid the paintbrush on the kitchen table and then he leaned forward and gave Lacey a kiss on the forehead.

‘Conor, you're awake now,' said Sidney.

Conor said, ‘Of course I'm awake.' And then suddenly he looked around and found himself standing inside the restaurant next to a table where an elderly couple were staring up at him in alarm.

‘Excuse me, I'm sorry,' he told them. He turned to Sidney, who was leaning back in his chair and smiling. ‘I guess I, um – I guess I thought you were somebody else.'

He went back outside, but as he did so the elderly man called after him, ‘Pardon me, sir. But I think you've forgotten something!'

He was holding out the large wooden salad spoon which Conor had put down in the middle of his corned-beef hash.

‘You hypnotized me,' said Conor. ‘I was alert. I was aware. I didn't want to be hypnotized. So how the hell did you do it?'

It wasn't difficult. You've been under a whole lot of stress lately, mental and physical. I simply suggested that you would find it relaxing and comfortable to go into a very light trance, and that's what you did. There are so many people like you who think that nobody can ever hypnotize them, but I'd say that ninety per cent of the population are susceptible to hypnotic induction.'

‘So what did I do? Why did I put that spoon in that poor old guy's lunch?'

‘You imagined it was something else – a paintbrush. You were taking it to your girlfriend Lacey. You saw her in the kitchen, mixing paint.'

Conor shook his head. ‘I don't remember thinking that it was a paintbrush. I don't remember anything.' He was impressed. He couldn't help being impressed. But he was annoyed, too, because Sidney had been able to manipulate him so easily and because he had made a fool out of him, however gently he had done it. The elderly couple were eating peach-and-vanilla ice cream now and watching everything he did with deep suspicion.

Eleanor took hold of his hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. ‘Sidney would never do anything to harm you, believe me. He's just
showing
you.'

Conor said, ‘The difference is, Sidney, you
talked
to me. You talked me into that trace. But Ramon Perez only shook me by the hand and said, “Do you know me?”'

Sidney clapped another handful of nuts into his mouth and vigorously chewed. ‘That's right. That was a textbook handshake induction. It's very effective indeed. What you do is, you begin by shaking hands with your subject in the normal way. “Oh, hi, how do you do?” You can do it to anybody. But it's the way you
let loose
that's important. You draw your hand away with a gentle touch of your thumb, a kind of trailing sensation with your little finger, a touch of your middle finger, too. This feeling is enough to distract your subject's attention. It makes him uncertain, and at the same time it gives him or her a feeling of expectancy, that something important is going to happen.

‘At this point, you lift your subject's wrist – but very, very gently, so that it doesn't even feel like an upward push. Then you give a downward touch. The subject's hand is left in midair – not going up and not going down. They can't move it unless you tell them to.

‘That's when you say something confusing like “Didn't I see you in Memphis last year?” – which makes your subject turn inward. He's looking for an answer, some kind of orientation, and you're encouraging him to go into a trance by asking him questions which make him look inside of himself. The whole nature of hypnotic trance is
inner direction
and
searching
. Your subject is so preoccupied with rummaging around inside of his mind that he
experiences anesthesia, or a temporary lapse in vision or hearing, or a feeling of
déjà vu
.

‘The thing of it is that some level of light trance isn't at all unusual, even in everyday life. Think of all the times when you've been hungry or thirsty or tired but you've put those feelings aside because you've had a job to do – some case to solve. Your inner search has taken priority over your physical demands.'

‘I still don't see how Ramon Perez could have hypnotized me so quickly.'

‘OK. You want quick? Give me your hand.'

‘I'm not sure I want to do this.'

‘It'll be fine. Trust me, I'm a hypnotist.'

Conor reached out across the table and Sidney took hold of his hand. His fingers were dry and gentle and caressing. He said, ‘Something's happened to your hand. It's numb. You can't lift it.'

Conor tried to raise his arm but it wouldn't move. It didn't feel heavy, but it felt anesthetized, as if he could have stuck needles into it without feeling any pain at all. He tried to wriggle his fingers but they wouldn't respond.

‘Now you're going to lift up your arm … that's it, higher, higher, higher.' Sidney touched Conor's knuckles to prevent him from taking it up any further. ‘Good … now you're going to lower it. You're all right now. All of your feeling is starting to return. Feels a bit sore, doesn't it? Feels like you've broken out with some kind of a rash.'

He was right: Conor felt a burning sensation, as if he had brushed up against poison ivy. ‘How do you
do
that?' he said.

‘It takes training, but fundamentally it isn't difficult. You have to care about people, that's all; and learn to recognize what their anxieties are. Most people have the answers to their own problems right there, right inside of themselves. They want to confront them but they daren't. All a hypnotherapist does is to reassure them that they can cope with them, that everything's going to be manageable. Oh, and by the way, your rash has cleared up.'

The burning faded. Conor turned his arm this way and that, but there was no sign of any redness whatsoever.

‘Could you train me to do that?' he asked.

‘For sure. You seem to have the right kind of demeanor for it. You speak quietly. You give off a strong sense of inner authority. You're experienced in dealing with people – particularly people with problems.'

‘And that would help me to handle Hypnos and Hetti? Always supposing I can find them, of course.'

Sidney nodded. ‘I could show you most of their induction techniques, and how to be resistant to them. You'd just have to bear in mind that they're two of the best hypnotists ever.'

‘How long would it take?'

‘It depends what level of competence you want to reach. I could teach you basic trance induction in a matter of days.'

‘And would you?'

Sidney hesitated, but Eleanor said, ‘Come on, Sidney … Conor and I could stay here for a long weekend. It would be just like old times.'

‘Well … all right,' Sidney agreed.

Eleanor leaned over and kissed him. ‘I missed you so much when you left me,' she said.

‘I wish I never had. I really do.'

They were still talking about old times when Conor noticed two men walk into the front of the restaurant and approach the desk. Both of them wore amber-lensed sunglasses and had short, cropped hair. In spite of the heat, they wore sport coats. One of them spoke to the manageress, and she pointed to the garden.

He nodded, and then started to make his way swiftly toward them, while his companion remained by the door. That aroused Conor's suspicions instantly. If they had come here to eat, why weren't they coming to the garden together?

No – this was your classic hit situation. One man to whack the victim and the other to keep him covered. As he came weaving between the tables, Conor could already see the man's hand reaching inside his coat.

Without hesitation he picked up his half-finished plateful of food and hurled it through the restaurant door. The man tried to dodge it, but it caught him on the shoulder and splattered peas and gravy all over his coat.

The gun came out. Conor tipped their table over, smashing their plates, glasses and water-jug. Cutlery jangled on the patio floor like alarm bells. He dragged Eleanor off her chair and onto the paving, so that the table acted as a shield. He shouted, ‘
Down
!' to Sidney, seizing the leg of his pants and pulling him off his chair, too. There was a sharp
whistling crack from inside the restaurant and a bullet banged into the oak-plank tabletop.

Eleanor, with her hands clapped over her ears, crouched down as low as she could and stared at Conor open-mouthed and fearful. There was another crack, and splinters of wood flew off the rim of the table and showered them. Inside the restaurant people were screaming and Conor could hear chairs being knocked over.

Normally, a gunman would have allowed himself only a few seconds to finish them off so that he could make his getaway. But if this gunman was a cop himself – which Conor suspected he was – there was every likelihood that the Richmond County police would make their way here by the scenic route.

Through a chink in the tabletop he saw the gunman cautiously approaching them. He couldn't see his face, but
you are a cop
, he thought.
I can tell by the way you move
.

‘Has he gone?' whispered Eleanor.

Conor shook his head.

‘Then what are you going to do?' asked Sidney.

Conor waited until the gunman was less than fifteen feet away. But there was only one thing he
could
do. He couldn't risk Eleanor or Sidney getting hurt, or anybody else in the Richmond Inn, for that matter. He called, ‘Don't shoot, I'm coming out!' then stood up in full view of the gunman with his hands lifted.

‘Don't try anything cute,' the gunman told him. ‘I don't care whether you wind up dead or alive, but I get more money if you're alive.'

‘Are you a cop?' asked Conor.

‘What's it to you?'

‘I know a cop when I see one, that's all.'

The gunman held his automatic two-handed, steady as a rock. ‘I used to be a cop. Just like you.'

‘You
used
to be a cop? So what are you now?'

‘Security adviser, just like you.'

‘Oh, yes? So who sent you here?'

‘Certain interested parties.'

‘Name one.'

‘I don't have to name one. I just want everything back. All of it.'

‘You want
what
back? I don't know what the hell you're talking about.'

The gunman was growing agitated. His partner, by the restaurant door, gave him a sharp whistle, which obviously meant that time was running out. If his partner had a gun, he wasn't showing it, but he was standing right in the aisle so that none of the customers could leave. The customers had stopped screaming, and now they were beginning to show signs of irritation and bravado.
Very explosive situation
, thought Conor. The last thing he wanted was for some white-haired senior to start playing the hero.

‘OK,' he told the gunman. ‘But none of it's here. We'll have to go back to Manhattan to get it.'

‘You'd better not be jerking me around.'

‘Come on, man,' urged his partner. ‘We're running out of time.'

‘Listen,' said Conor. ‘Stay cool. You can take me back to Manhattan and I'll hand the stuff over.'

‘You'd better not be jerking me around. I mean it.'

‘You're a barbarian', said the elderly man in whose corned-beef hash Conor had laid his salad server.

‘I'm a what? I'm a fucking what?'

‘A barbarian. A throwback. That's all. You're nothing without that gun.'

‘Are you talking to me?' said the gunman. ‘Are you talking to
me
?' Then, without hesitation, he pressed the muzzle of his silencer up against the old man's right kneecap and fired. The old man collapsed onto the floor, his knee spraying out blood. His wife let out a cry like an injured bird and knelt on the floor beside him.