Part 9 (2/2)

”From what you've told me, it's not a thing; more like a state of being. The word 'Otherness' doesn't tell us much about it. Whatever it is, at this point it's unknowable. We do know that it can't be warded off by crystals and charms and it won't be summoned by incantations and sacrifices. So all the mumbo-jumbo these New Agers and the End of Days folk and the UFO cultists and all their fellow travelers immerse themselves in is useless. The real darkness in this world doesn't reveal itself; it abides by its own laws and follows its own agenda.”

Jack found himself thinking about his sister. He blamed her death on the Otherness.

”I never told you what Kate said to me just before she died. Something about 'the dark' coming. She said the virus in her head was letting her see it. She said the 'dark is waiting but it will be coming soon.' Said it was going to roll over everything.”

”With all due respect to your sister-and I should maybe never forgive you for not bringing that fine woman to meet me-she was in extremis. She probably didn't know what she was saying.”

”I think she did, Abe. I think she was talking about the Otherness getting the upper hand here. It sort of fits with sc.r.a.ps I've been picking up since the spring. The events after that conspiracy convention, hints from the guy running the freak show, and what that crazy Russian lady said to me at Kate's graveside, they all hint at the same thing: a bad time coming, one that'll make all other bad times look like a picnic. The worst time ever for the human race, worse than all the plagues and world wars rolled into one.”

Abe stared at him, his expression grim. This fit in with the civil holocaust he'd been predicting forever. ”Did she say what we could do about it?”

”No.”

Kate had also told Jack that only a handful of people were going to stand in the way of the darkness, and that he was one of them. But he didn't mention that.

Abe shrugged again. ”Well, then?”

”That's not why I brought it up. I'm wondering if maybe people sense this darkness approaching. Not consciously, but on a primitive, subconscious level. Maybe that explains why so many people are turning to fundamentalist and orthodox religions-ones that offer a clear and simple answer for everything. Maybe that's why conspiracy theories are so popular. These people sense something awful coming but can't put their finger on what it is, so they look for a belief system that will give them an answer and a solution.”

”What about us poor schmucks who don't have a belief system to lean on?”

Jack sighed. ”We'll probably be the ones stuck in the trenches dealing with the real thing when it comes along.”

”You think this earthquake had something to do with it?”

”I can't see how, but that doesn't mean anything. Lately I've seen too many innocent-seeming situations take a sharp turn and head into the can at ninety miles an hour.”

He thought about last night... and how that quake seemed to hit just as he and Gia stepped over the threshold of Menelaus Manor. He wanted to think that was coincidence, but it was not comforting to know that the house sat on a crack in the earth's crust, a direct channel down to a lode of ancient rock that was not resting easy.

He wondered if Ifasen was feeling any aftershocks.

4.

”Now, if we will all place our hands on the table, palms flat down... that's it... when we're all relaxed, we shall begin.”

Lyle looked at his three sitters arrayed around the round oak pawfoot table. The two middle-aged women, Anya Spiegelman and Evelyn Jusko, had been here before, and he knew all about them. Vincent McCarthy was new. A blank. All Lyle had known about him until his arrival a few moments ago was his name.

But now he knew a fair bit about him. And he'd learn much more in the next few minutes. Lyle loved the challenge of a cold reading.

”I want everyone to close their eyes for a moment and breathe deeply... just a few breaths to calm you. Turmoil interferes with spirit contact. We must be at peace...”

Peace... Lyle needed to be relaxed to do this right. At least the house was at peace. The windows and doors had stopped opening shortly before the sitters arrived. Now... if only he could be at peace.

Not easy after calling Kareena's apartment this morning and having a man answer, hearing him say Kareena was in the shower and ask if he was from the radio station.

He had to put his anger and his hurt on hold. He'd let Kareena screw with his emotions, he wasn't about to let her screw up his livelihood. Put aside the negative feelings and be positive... at least for now. Concentrate on Vincent McCarthy.

Lyle opened his eyes and studied him. He guessed his age in the neighborhood of forty, and knew he had a few bucks. His Brooks Brothers golf s.h.i.+rt and expensive lightweight summer slacks said so; so did the s.h.i.+ny new Lexus SC 430 hardtop convertible he'd parked in the driveway. No tattoos on his tanned forearms; no earring; just a simple gold band on the ring finger. And check out those fingers: clean, no calluses, manicured nails.

So we're dealing with a married, well-heeled white dude in his forties. He's come to Astoria to sit in a darkened room on a perfect Sat.u.r.day for golf. That can only mean he's big-time worried about something.

Money? Not likely.

Business. Also unlikely. If Vincent is in business he either owns it or he's a high-up executive. He knows his way around a spreadsheet and a boardroom; he's not going to consult the spirit world about a territory where he considers himself an alpha male.

Marriage? Possibly. The skills that make him successful in the money end of his life do not necessarily transfer to the emotional side. He could be a klutz in the relations.h.i.+p arena.

Health? He looks well himself, but he could be worried about someone else's health. Wife, parent, or child.

Lyle closed his eyes and decided to go with health. Nudge around the perimeter witfi a series of try-ons and see what the man would reveal. If that didn't pan out, he could backtrack to the marriage, but he doubted that would be necessary.

”Since the spirits shun the light, we will make the room more inviting to them.”

Back in Charlie's command post, a little room behind the south wall that he'd packed with all his electronic gizmos, his brother would pick up Lyle's words through the tiny microphone hidden in the chandelier directly above, and act accordingly. Sure enough, the overhead bulbs dimmed until only the faint glow of a single red bulb lit the table area.

”I feel it,” Lyle said. ”I feel the gates opening...” Charlie's cue to direct a little cold air at the table. ”... to allow us contact with the Other Side.” He let his head fall back, opened his mouth, and let out a long, soft, ”Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhh.”

The sound wasn't all show. A good deal of it was real, a pliant ecstasy easing from his soul, like leisurely s.e.x- That he wasn't having.

Stop! Don't blow this because of a cheating...

Easy... easy... he reminded himself that this was when he felt most alive, this was when he was in control, when he ruled this, his little corner of the world. The rest of his life might be in chaos right now, but in this time, in this place, he called the shots. He was the master...

Master of illusion... that was his self-declared moniker in his teens. And he hadn't been stroking himself. That was exactly what he'd become after Momma died. Or rather, was killed. She'd been carrying a sack of groceries through Westwood Park on her way back from the market, crossing the street with the walking green, when two cars out of nowhere, one chasing the other, trading 9mm slugs, ran the red and knocked her forty feet through the air. The hit-and-run b.a.s.t.a.r.ds were never found.

To the rest of the city she'd been just another noncombatant fatality in Detroit's crack wars. But to Lyle and Charlie she'd been the world. Their father was a shadow in Lyle's memory and didn't exist at all in Charlie's. Dad's brother, Uncle Bill, used to stop by now and again, but n.o.body had heard from him since he left for the West Coast.

So there they were, the Kenton brothers, Lyle sixteen, Charlie twelve, all alone, existing on the help of the neighbors, but all too soon the Child Welfare folks came sniffing. He and Charlie could pretend no one was home for only so long before they missed one too many rent payments and wound up on the street or, worse, were split up and placed in foster care.

So Lyle decided to become his Uncle Bill. He'd been tall for his age then, and with the help of a fake beard and some make-up, he fooled the social worker. He still remembered Maria Reyes, MSW, a good woman with a sincere desire to help. She believed that Lyle was Bill Kenton; she believed that Saleem Fredericks-a friend from downstairs in the project he borrowed for the home inspection visits-was Lyle.

And Lyle learned something then: the power of belief, and the even greater power of the desire to believe, the need need to believe. Ms. Reyes believed because she to believe. Ms. Reyes believed because she wanted wanted to believe. She didn't want to split up the brothers; she'd wanted a blood relative as legal guardian, and so she'd believed everything Lyle tossed her way. to believe. She didn't want to split up the brothers; she'd wanted a blood relative as legal guardian, and so she'd believed everything Lyle tossed her way.

Or had she? Years later Lyle began to wonder if Ms. Reyes had seen through him all along. Wondered if she'd been taken in not by his performance but by his determination to hold together the remnants of his tattered family, and that was why she'd allowed him to become his own legal guardian. Someday he'd have to track her down and ask.

Whatever the truth, sixteen-year-old Lyle Kenton had found his calling: the scam. If he could scam the city, he could scam anyone. His first paying gig was as a slider for a downtown monte game, watching the street for the heat, ready to make the call that would fold the game. He quickly learned the shaker's verbal codes and moved up to the stick position where he'd stand around the table and s.h.i.+ll the marks into the game, but all his off hours he spent practicing the moves so he could become a shaker and start his own game.

But after a particularly close call when he'd barely outrun one of the plainclothes D's who'd broken up their game, he cast about for something equally profitable but a little less risky. He found it: a psychic hotline. An audition with a phony Jamaican accent got him hired. After a few hours of practice with a list of cold-reading questions, he joined the crew of men and women-mostly women-in a loft filled with phones and baffle boxes.

Everything he was taught had been geared to keeping the mark on the line as long as possible. First, get the name and address so the mark can be put on a mailing list as a customer for everything from tarot decks to fortune-telling eight b.a.l.l.s. Next, convince them you've got a direct line to the Afterlife and the wells of Ancient Knowledge, tell them what they want to hear, make them beg for more-more-more, say anything you want but keep them on the f.u.c.king line keep them on the f.u.c.king line. After all, they were paying five or six dollars a minute to hear psychic wisdom, and Lyle was getting a piece of the action. In no time he was bringing down a grand or better a week without breaking a sweat.

He-as Uncle Bill-and Charlie moved out of the projects and into a garden apartment in the suburbs. It wasn't much, but after Westwood Park, it was like Beverly Hills.

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