Kaleidoscope Page 6

In her mind, concentrating on the coin's picture, she went through each room. "A closet," she said at last.

  "Impossible," he told her. "Sorry, I've searched ever)' closet. Thoroughly. Even drawer, every chair, bed, and couch."

  Paying no attention to this she added, "I gain an impression of fur."

  "Fur!"

  "Yes, have you a fur coat or rug, perhaps? No," she amended, "something much smaller."

  "Small? And fur?" With a frown he said, "That's strange; I've a pair of very old fur bedroom slippers."

  She nodded. "Good. I believe you will find the coin in one of those fur slippers, although one must wonder how it got there."

  Startled, he said, "I nearly threw them away, but. . , yes, I did wear them one very cold evening a month ago. You really think... ?"

  She laughed. "Then how fortunate you did not throw them away."

  Surprised and curious about her, she had brewed coffee and they had settled down to a long and interesting talk about his career and hers, and by the time he left they had established an easy and amusing relationship. Not having a telephone as yet he had sent her by mail the next day a note to say the coin had been found precisely where she'd said he would find it, and he had enclosed a check, begging her to use the money to install a telephone because writing notes bored him, and he would like to talk to her occasionally.

  She had not ordered a phone; she had paid her rent with his check.

  Now he opened the door for her at once, still handsome and distinguished in his seventies; he had cultivated a white goatee to match his white hair, and there was always a twinkle in his clear blue eyes. "Come in, come in," he said, radiating the charm that brought him so many friends. "It's a rare day when I can do something for you."

  Once seated in his well-appointed living room she asked if he'd heard of Georges Verlag.

  "Oh, yes," he said, "one of Zale's men."

  She smiled. "So you do still have connections—as I hoped."

  He said dryly, "My two experiences in prison invoked a great deal of interest among my fellow inmates, and I have never lost an opportunity to broaden my education. It was very educational for me to make friends with them. When I left it was with many well-wishers, who remain in touch. What about Georges Verlag?"

  She described her experience in the subway, the attaché case tossed to her, his subsequent departure with the man following him.

  "Can you describe the man following him?"

  She said efficiently, "Sharp pointed nose, sharp pointed chin, thin lips, roughly six feet tall."

  He thought for a few minutes, frowning. "That sounds rather like the young man they call Frankie the Ferret, an unsavory chap, works out of Jake Bodley's group."

  "What I want to know," she said firmly, "is whether the man caught up with Georges and is holding him, or whether Georges escaped him and is in hiding. I want to know if he's alive."

  Amos said slyly, "Of course I'd rather know if you've kept the diamonds."

  She laughed. "Oh no, they're quite unreachable, the police have them. But my problem is that when I met Georges my name wasn't Karitska, so he has no way to find me—or his diamonds—which worries me."

  "I see. ... Of course eventually the company would contact both police and FBI."

  She nodded. "And the police will return the case of diamonds but not to Georges Verlag."

  "You are fond of this man?"

  "Fond? I scarcely knew him," she said. "He was my husband's friend, they worked for the same firm, but he dined with us several times; it was a decade ago but I have a memory for faces."

  "Apparently he does, too," pointed out Amos with humor. "I would not have cared to face you in any police lineup."

  She smiled. "You're not thinking of returning to your former. . , does one say 'profession'?"

  "Only through my books," he assured her, "although I must say, most of the criminals I write about seem to me de-pressingly indelicate and clumsy. It will take time, you know, to learn what happened to your subway chap."

  "I understand, but you will—"

  "I will," he assured her gravely, and Madame Karitska left, feeling that she had done what she could for poor Georges.

  At half past three that afternoon she opened her door to her last appointment of the day and was confronted by a fashionably dressed woman who looked both nervous and embarrassed, perhaps never having visited, or expected to visit, either Eighth Street or a clairvoyant, her face a pale oval, skin flawless, eyes carefully made up with eye shadow. Definitely she belonged to Cavendish Square

  ; she looked expensive.

  She said, "Karitska? Readings?"

  "Yes, do come in," Madame Karitska said cordially.

  "I told the cabdriver to wait; it won't take long, will it?"

  Madame Karitska smiled. "This is not precisely like a dental appointment. We shall see, shall we?"

  "Yes—yes, of course."

  The woman followed her inside, looking around in surprise at the sunny book-lined room. "I'd rather not give you my last name, but . . , well, my first name's Anna." She sat down on the edge of the couch as if ready to flee at any minute. "I didn't know what to expect—it's very private. Very private." She looked at Madame Karitska with suspicion. "My hairdresser told me about you. I didn't know where else to go. Are you discreet? I hope we don't know the same people."

  Madame Karitska wanted to laugh but only waved her hand gracefully at her small living room. She knew a number of people on Cavendish Square

  , had been there, after all, only two hours ago, but she saw no purpose in saying so. "Unless you frequent Eighth Street

  I really doubt that we'll meet again."

  "You see," she said, "it's about my husband."

  Madame Karitska sighed; another erring husband, she thought; í musí be tired, and reminded herself that love, money and grief were what usually brought people to her door. Patience was needed; bills had to be paid.

  "Have you been married? " demanded the woman.

  Amused, Madame Karitska said, "Actually three times, yes. Once for survival when I was fifteen, once for love, once for comfort and companionship."

  "Oh," the woman said, startled. "I suppose I should apologize for prying—"

  "Yes, you should," agreed Madame Karitska calmly, and waited. After all, she did not have to like her clients.

  "Well, I'm sorry," Anna said peevishly, "but this is embarrassing."

  "Yes, but you'd come about your husband?"

  She nodded. "We're very happily married," she said defiantly, "but I hardly ever see him; he's become so .., so secretive since he left his very important job a year ago. He's a computer expert, you see, and considered a genius. And with two friends—one of them from Intel and one from IBM, the three left to begin their own electronic company—but in Maine," she said with a catch in her voice, "and he refuses my moving there to be with him."

  There were tears in her eyes now. "Our home is here in Trafton, you see, but he comes back so seldom, I scarcely see him at all these days, and ..." She hesitated and then said at last, "I keep wondering if he's seeing another woman. Up there. In Maine. And my hairdresser said that if I brought you something of his—"

  "It's called psychometry," explained Madame Karitska gently. "Any object worn by a person for a length of time acquires vibrations, energy, tone from that person. What have you brought me?"

  From her purse she extracted a wristwatch with a frayed leather band. "He wore this until last month, when he finally bought a new one here in Trafton, on one of his few very short visits. He's worn it for years and years."

  Handing it to Madame Karitska she finally allowed herself to sit back on the couch, her eyes watching as she waited.

  Madame Karitska cupped the watch loosely in both hands and closed her eyes, and almost at once was jolted by the impressions that reached her. She said reluctantly, "His mind— it whirls, never stills. Obsessive. Brilliant, yes, but not restful."

  "I told you he's a genius," the woman
reminded her.

  But something was wrong, ver)' wrong, thought Madame Karitska, as wave after wave of negativeness reached her. There was malice, a sense of destructiveness, a sense almost of madness. It frightened her, and she dropped the wrist-watch and opened her eyes. Steadying herself she said, "At least I can tell you firmly there is no other woman."

  Anna's eyes brightened. "But then—what is it?"

  "His work," said Madame Karitska. "It completely absorbs him. He—they?—something is being invented, something new. It consumes, excites him. There is a feeling of feverish research. Something new . .." she repeated.

  And dangerous, but she did not add this. She returned the watch to the woman, not wanting to hold it a minute longer; it was too unsettling. "The important thing—what troubled you most, of course—is that there is no other woman. Absolutely no woman."

  Not even you, she thought, but refrained from saying this. Instead, regarding her with compassion she added, "It would be sensible, would it not, if you found some work of interest to keep you occupied while he is so intensely involved?"

  "Work?" She looked shocked. "But I haven't worked in years. I was a model before I married, but I would be too old, surely, for that. Why do you say this?"

  "Because," Madame Karitska told her carefully, "for the moment he has committed himself entirely elsewhere, and what better than to cultivate a life of your own?" But—

  "Volunteer work, perhaps? All your waking hours center on him, do they not?" Seeing her face turn sullen she made an appeal to her vanity. "Such worry and frustration will age you. Add lines to your face."

  She was vain enough for this to penetrate. "Age me?" she faltered.

  "But enough," said Madame Karitska, rising. "Think about it. Work is always good for the soul."

  Reluctantly the woman rose. "I just wish 1 could know what is so interesting, working in a small town in Maine like Denby." She sighed but gave Madame Karitska a forced smile. "What do you charge?"

  "I prefer to let my clients decide that."

  The woman reached into her purse, but so clumsily that a shower of memo notes fell out of it to the floor. After bending over to pick them up she placed a fifty-dollar bill on the table. "And you're absolutely sure there's no other woman?"

  "Absolutely," Madame Karitska assured her.

  "Then I thank you. Marjorie said . . , yes, I will believe you. I must."

  And she was gone. The taxi had waited—for a woman of such means a taxi would always wait, reflected Madame Karitska—and noticing a slip of paper on the floor she picked it up. It appeared to be a list for camping: sleeping bag, she read, five kerosene lamps, wood for fireplace, canned goods, water in gallon jugs ... It certainly didn't match the woman who had just left, but obviously it had dropped from her purse. She placed it on her bookcase, should the woman miss it and return for it. She glanced at the clock; she had no evening appointments and she had fifty dollars, more than she had expected for this day when added to the amount from her four clients of the morning.

  With a decisive nod she pocketed the fifty-dollar bill, locked the door of her apartment, and set out for Sixth Street

  , a notorious neighborhood for anyone with a fifty-dollar bill, but she had been there before. She was heading for a certain hole-in-the-wall storefront with a sign that read HELP SAVE TOMORROW, and it was necessary to pass hustlers, drug dealers, glares, and a few whistles until she reached the shabby entrance with its peeling sign.

  She entered to find Daniel Henry standing over a pile of T-shirts on the counter and sorting them. Over in a corner several small boys were looking over the few books in a bookcase. Glancing up, Daniel grinned his pleasure with a "Madame Karitska!" leaving her to reflect, not without humor, that on this street the "Madame" could easily be misunderstood.

  Daniel was big and well-muscled and black; he was an ex-convict, and if she had told him that on the street one day as she passed his store a sense of his personality had caused her to pause, not even seeing him, and had drawn her inside to meet him, he would no doubt have thought her quite mad, when in fact she had never before sensed a man so dedicated to helping rescue the flock of sad, dangerous, and hopeless people he lived among. A local church contributed some money, but never enough.

  "I've had a good week, Daniel," she told him, and placed the fifty-dollar bill on his counter.

  His mouth dropped open. "Madame Karitska—"

  She laughed. "Not again! I've told you, I've many times in my life gone hungry' for want of money."

  His broad scarred face beamed at her. "Hard to believe."

  "Believe!" she said, and as she returned to the door he followed and shouted, "Hey, you guys, let her pass, you hear? She's a lady."

  With a feeling that Anna's fifty dollars had been well placed, she strolled back to Eighth Street

  . The sun had begun its descent behind the taller buildings of the city, and the sky was fading into gray. It had been a surprisingly busy day, and she could look forward now to meditating, to savoring her dinner of tajine, and she might listen to Bach, or perhaps tonight she would choose Edith Piaf.

  6

  Madame Karitska had begun to notice the new family that had moved in across the street from her. The father was seen only rarely, when he returned in his work clothes from whatever job paid for their rent and food. The mother did a great deal of fussing over a pretty little girl about seven years old. There was a boy, too, but little attention seemed to be paid to him; he was younger, perhaps five or six, and the few times that Madame Karitska had seen the three of them go out together in the morning the boy still occupied a stroller, never smiled, and appeared simply to stare straight ahead of him with no expression at all. The girl was vivacious and skipped happily beside her mother, always with a bright ribbon in her dark hair, but she too ignored her brother in the stroller. To Madame Karitska the boy's being conveyed in a stroller at his age seemed odd, and she wondered if perhaps his legs were deformed, but she was accustomed to this automatic awareness of others without allowing it to be more than idle curiosity.

  At least until the woman knocked on her door sharply that noon when Madame Karitska was fortunately between clients .., or had the woman watched the house, she wondered, waiting for someone other than Kristan or herself to leave? She was a small woman with fierce black eyes, wearing a long and dusty black dress under a cardigan with several buttons missing.

  She said at once, defiantly, "No danaro .., no money, I cannot pay, you help peoples?"

  Obviously she was on the edge of hysteria, or certainly desperate. "Come in," Madame Karitska told her gently. "Tell me what I can do for a neighbor of mine. Forget the money."

  "Si? Grazie," she said in a softer voice, and followed Madame Karitska inside.

  Her accent was thick; Madame Karitska insisted on reheating and bringing her a cup of coffee, the woman following her into the kitchen, too distraught to sit and wait in the living room. They were new here, she said, from a small village in Italia, and her son did not parlare—talk, she corrected herself, and her husband had taken Luca to il dottore at the clinic, who said—and here tears rose to her eyes—"he said Luca is auto-something and should—must be—what is word, put away?"

  "Now that is very sad," agreed Madame Karitska, leading her back into the living room and pouring coffee for her. "Please sit down. Was the word he used autistic and the other word institution?"

  She nodded vigorously. "Per favore, can you heal? Like il dottore? I hear things, you are simpática?"

  Knowing very little Italian Madame Karitska guessed that the woman hoped for the impossible, and yet she had seen the child from across the street, so impassive, so stoic and yet strangely attractive, and she admitted to curiosity, as well as to pity for his distraught mother, who cared. She said, "His name is Luca?"

  "Si. Luca Cialini."

  Madame Karitska nodded. "I would have to see him," she said, "and see him here." She waved a hand at her living room.

  The woman poured ou
t words in alarm, from which Madame Karitska deduced that her husband must not know; it would have to be segreto.

  "Secret?" suggested Madame Karitska.

  The woman nodded vigorously. "He say Luca has male-dire," and when this met with a blank and questioning response she scowled, searching for a word. At last, "curse," she blurted out.

  Madame Karitska said, "Nonsense," and feeling that she had just about exhausted the little Italian she knew, she reached for pencil and paper and drew a clock for her. "Domani .., in morning? Saturday morning?" And she drew two lines in the circle denoting nine o'clock.

  The woman brightened. "Bene—good," she said with relief. "Grazie. Grazie mille," and putting down her cup of coffee she rose, nodding, smiling, and was escorted to the door, so radiant with hope that Madame Karitska winced.

  The next morning she waited for the family with some anticipation, but when the door opened across the street only Mrs. Cialini and the boy emerged. The mother struggled with the stroller, placed Luca in it, and carefully wheeled it across the street. "So—no father," murmured Madame Karitska, this man who believed his son cursed, and opened the door to them; the stroller was left in the hall and Mrs. Cialini carried her son inside to the couch, where he sat staring at the books lining the wall, and then at Madame Karitska, still without expression. His face was well formed, framed by a crop of curly black hair, his eyes wide and fringed with long lashes, but there was no hint of curiosity in them, not even when Madame Karitska sat down beside him on the couch and gently reached for one of his hands, a technique that she rarely used but in this case the only one possible, since no toy had accompanied him; there was only himself. It needed time . ., more time than holding an object that he loved, if he possessed any. He certainly showed signs of neglect, and she wondered if he had been abused—as if neglect in itself was not abuse—and it was necessary for her to close her eyes to shield herself from the boy's mother, who sat on the opposite couch, leaning forward with eagerness, and watching closely.

  Very slowly impressions surfaced and grew, until abruptly Madame Karitska removed her hand from his, startled. The boy's eyes met hers for a moment and—incredibly—she thought he looked amused.