The Shadow Box (43 page)

Unraveling. It's all unraveling.

Parker was right about one thing. The* mistake, if there
was one, was firing Michael. Better the devil you can see.

But it had been just too nerve-wracking, waiting to see
whether he would come back to work as if nothing had
happened. Wondering whether he really did know or
whether—as Bronwyn seemed to think—he knew nothing
at all. There's an irony for you. Bronwyn arguing that
there was no need to kill him. But Rast would have none
of it and Bronwyn, as always, was a good and willing
soldier.

Of what the uncle knew, at least, she had little doubt. Bronwyn saw in Jake Fallon's eyes that he had recognized Franz Rast in that copy of the annual report. From twenty-
five years earlier. Before he was a baron. Before he was
a corporate giant.

Before he was even Franz Rast.

Chapter 25

They sat
in the cockpit of Megan's ketch, watch
ing the sunset. The dinner dishes had been washed and
stowed. He would have to head back soon. Tomorrow
would be a long and busy day because his first guests
would be arriving on Friday. But there was always tomor
row night. Michael squeezed her hand.

“What was that thing you were going to show me?”

“What thing was that?”

“You know. How to leave all the bad stuff in New
York.”

“Oh.” She smiled as if at a private joke. ”I don't think
you need that now.”

Never mind,
again.

“Yeah, but now I'm curious. Is it something that we,
ah, do together?”

The smile spread into a grin. “It doesn't require un
dressing, Michael.”

”I wasn't thinking that.”

“The heck you weren't.”

“Megan . . .”

“Okay. Okay, give me a minute.”

What it turned out to be was a mental exercise that she
said she learned from an old Hindu fakir. They've used it
for centuries, she told him, to clear their minds of excess
baggage. It's how they make ropes climb up by themselves
and it's how they stick big steel pins through their tongues
without apparent pain or injury. He told her he'd settle for a couple of beers but she sat him down and made him try
it. It turned out to be pretty interesting. More than that, it
really seemed to work.

All you do is sit quietly, close your eyes, and focus on
any bad memory, any old hurt, any recent personal stupid
ity. You take that one thing, whatever it is, and you isolate
it right in the middle of your brain and let it float there
like a single rain cloud. You try to go blank on everything
else. If other thoughts intrude, you pluck them away like
you'd pluck Kleenex out of a box. That done, you start
to ease the hurtful part forward. What you want to do
is push it, using steady pressure, through the center of
your forehead.

Now comes the fun part.

It's floating a foot in front of your forehead now. You
bring up both hands, cup them, and gradually compress it into a ball. Tennis-ball size is about right. As you're shap
ing it, you get so you can actually feel it. It gives off heat,
just a little, and it has weight. You can heft it in one
hand. You can toss it back and forth and feel it when you
catch it.

This, according to Megan, is because thought waves are
matter. An idea is matter. A memory is matter. This is
because all brain activity is electrical and electrons them
selves are matter. They give off heat and they have weight.

You now have this bad memory, this ball, right where
you want it. You rear back your head and send that sucker
flying straight over the horizon. In this case, straight
toward New York. As it disappears from sight, you start
counting down from ten. The instant you hit zero, there's
this distant flash of light where it made impact. Follow that, if you wish, with a mushroom cloud.

Megan appeared at the hatch. She handed him a beer.

“Feel better?”

“I'll be darned. Yes.”

“Told you so.”

”I even nuked New York.”

“Whatever works for you.”

“Is this what you do?”

“U
m
. . . not exactly.”

“Well, where do you send your bad memories?”

An odd little smile. Suddenly, it broke wide open.
“Come on, Megan. Where?” “Nowhere. I've never tried that exercise.”

“How come?”

   
She backed away from the hatch.
“I'm not as gullible as you are.”
Megan ran for her life. She locked herself in the head
and called, “Gotcha, Michael Fallon.”
Damn.

“Dr. Greenberg?”

‘‘Yes?”

“
‘She just said her ‘gotcha' out loud. Did I say mine
out loud?”

“You're on your own, Michael.”

Later, they sat quietly, listening to frogs and crickets.

Okay, thought Fallon. That round went to Megan. She
said she wouldn't know a Hindu fakir from an L.A. Laker.
She just thought she'd try some power of suggestion on
him but then he was so enthusiastic about his magic cure
that she couldn't keep a straight face.

He refused to believe, however, that she made all that
up on the spot. That business about electrons having weight did not have the sound of coming off the top of her head. Anyway, they do have weight. An electron is
an atomic particle. Smaller than a proton but bigger than
nothing. He remembered that much from sophomore
physics.

She said she might have heard it somewhere. She
couldn't recall. And then when he pressed her, the grin
went away and she started to get quiet. So he dropped it.
Anyway, it was time to start back to Edgartown.

But hey, it worked.

The memory of Bronwyn, and especially the guilt, were
already so far gone that it seemed almost indecent. And he could think of Uncle Jake as he was in life instead of
always seeing him inside a medical examiner's chalk out
line. But he still missed him desperately. And he wished
he'd hear something from Moon. He was getting to the
point, however, where he was almost beginning to agree
with Mr. Doyle. Forget the Bart Hobbs thing. You just
vaporized him anyway. Lehman-Stone along with him. Go
on with your life. He didn't even hate New York anymore.

Life was getting sweeter by the day. He loved owning the Taylor House, he loved Martha's Vineyard and, most
of all, he loved being with Megan. Her own demons, what
ever their source, seemed to be keeping their distance as
well.

There was a wonderful old movie called
Bell, Book &
Candle.
Kim Novak played a witch who lost all her pow
ers by falling in love with Jimmy Stewart. Maybe that, he
thought, is what's happening to Megan. Maybe psychics have to be miserable or at least psychologically damaged
for their powers to work. Nothing would please Megan
more, he felt sure, than to wake up in the morning and
find them gone.

Off to the west, Fallon could still see the mushroom
cloud. What he was looking at, actually, was just a
strata
-
cumulus back-lit by the retreating sun but he was begin
ning to feel sorry he did that anyway. He had realized for
some time, of course, that blaming a whole city for what
a handful of crummy people did was dumb. It had just
been so hard to accept that a man like Big Jake Fallon
and a girl like Bronwyn could be dead because some mis
erable piece of shit needed money for a fix.

New Yorkers, most of them, were as decent as any.
Most are just people trying to get by, trying not to become victims of the predators you'll find in any large city. And
they're stuck there. They can't just pick up and leave the
way he did.

He thought about Mrs. Mayfield, the woman who had
saved his life and whom he never thanked properly. He
wondered how she'd feel about a week, all expenses, at
an inn on Martha's Vineyard.

Good idea. Should have thought of it before.

Brendan Doyle must have her address.

He'll call him tonight from the Taylor House.

C
hapter 26

H
obbs stood,
watching for a taxi, inside the
61st Street entrance to the Pierre Hotel. Out of long habit,
he patted the pocket where he once carried cigarettes. He
reached instead for his pill bo
x
, hoping to find a Xanax.

There were none. Only antibiotics for his ulcer and two
Dexedrine tablets. Damn. He needed to go down, not up. And it was not a good idea to take speed on top of vodka.
But he swallowed one of each, then chewed two more
Maalox.

Five minutes passed. He had still not seen an unoccu
pied cab. His apartment building was on Fifth at 77th.
Too far to walk. Fifth Avenue ran one-way south but Mad
ison ran north. He would have more luck finding a cab at
the corner of Madison. He stepped through the doors and
turned, head down, in that direction.