Jack stared at his reflection in the mirrored wall of the elevator as it made its way to the fourteenth floor. He blew a pink bubble with the big wad of gum he was chewing, then checked out his appearance. He’d wanted somewhat of an eccentric look today, so he’d chosen a reddish mullet-style wig, banged in the front and long and thick in the back; a thick, dark brown mustache draped his upper lip. He wore a light green, western-style shirt, buttoned all the way to the top, dark green twill pants, and Doc Martens. He’d strapped some padding around his waist to give him a medium-size gut. Too bad he didn’t have a pierced earlobe;
a rhinestone stud would have made a nice finishing touch.
He checked to make sure enough of the wig’s long back was draped over his left ear to hide the earpiece. One of the tasks he and Charlie had completed last night was planting a bug in Carl Foster’s command center. The receiver was taped to the small of Jack’s back; its slim, almost invisible wire ran up to his collar and around the back of his ear.
He’d cabbed over from his place on the Upper West Side and arrived unannounced in the lobby of Madame Pomerol’s building half an hour before the high-roller sitting she’d scheduled for this afternoon. He’d found a doorman waiting. Thankfully the building didn’t keep one on duty around the clock, or he and Charlie would have had to abort their mission last night. As it was, all they’d had to do was use their copies of the Fosters’ keys to unlock the glass front door and stroll in.
This afternoon the doorman, a dark Hispanic named Silvio, had allowed him to call upstairs from the lobby. Jack had told the man who answered—presumably Carl Poster—that he wanted to schedule a private reading in the very near future.
Come right up.
Carl Foster—looking so much better clothed—answered Jack’s knock on the door of suite 14-B. He wore all black—black turtleneck jersey, black shoes, black socks—and Jack knew why. His skin appeared reddened around the eyes and mouth—irritated by, say, duct tape adhesive, Carl?—but otherwise he didn’t look too much the worse for last night’s wear.
Carl Foster’s forehead seemed permanently furrowed, perhaps as a result of keeping his eyebrows raised, as if he existed in a state of perpetual surprise. Jack hadn’t noticed it last night, but then, Foster had had good reason to be surprised then.
He ushered Jack into a small waiting room furnished with an antique desk and half a dozen upholstered chairs.
The muted colors on the walls and the thick Oriental rug lent an atmosphere of quiet comfort and tasteful opulence. Business appeared to be good for Madame Pomerol.
Foster extended his hand. “Welcome to Madame Pomerol’s Temple of Eternal Wisdom. I am Carl Foster. And you are … ?”
“Butler,” Jack said, adding a hint of the South to his accent as he gave the hand a hearty shake. “Bob Butler. Pleased to meetcha.” Jack chewed his gum with an open mouth as he looked around. “Where’s the lady?”
“Madame? She’s preparing for a reading.”
“I wanna talk to her.”
“I thought you wanted to schedule a private reading.”
“I do, but I’d like to speak to the head honcho first.”
“I’m afraid that’s quite impossible. Madame Pomerol’s time is very valuable. However, you should know that I have her complete trust. I screen all her clients and make her appointments.”
Jack had figured that, but he wanted to seem like a rube.
“Screen? Why would I have to be screened? You mean to tell me I might not be good enough for this Madame Pomerol?”
“Oh, no, of course not. It’s just that there are certain religious groups and even some atheist groups who do not approve of Madame’s work. They’ve been known to try to waste her time and even disrupt her readings.”
“I’d think she’d be able to sniff them out in advance herself. I mean, being a psychic and all.”
Foster offered him a wan smile. “The word ‘psychic’ is so often misused. Madame is a spirit medium.”
“There’s a difference?
“Of course. So many so-called psychics are charlatans, little better than sideshow performers. Madame has a special gift from God that allows her to speak to the souls of the departed.”
“So she can’t like, predict the future?”
“At times, yes. But we must remember that any special
knowledge she might have comes from the spirits, and they do not tell her everything.”
“Well, I ain’t connected with no religious group. No worry there. I’m here because I got some important questions for my uncle. I can’t ask him myself—him being dead and all—so I figured I need a psychic type.”
This was Jack’s cover story. He’d make an appointment for tomorrow but wouldn’t keep it.
“What sort of questions?” Foster asked nonchalantly as he moved behind the desk.
There’s a good helper, Jack thought. Finding out as much as he can in advance.
He smiled but let an edge creep into his tone. “If I thought you could answer them, I wouldn’t need Madame Pomerol, would I?”
Foster forced a good-natured laugh. “No, I suppose not. Who referred you to Madame Pomerol, by the way?”
“Referred? No one. I read about her in the paper this morning. I figured if she was tight enough with the spirits that they’re playing tricks on her, then she’s the lady for me.”
Foster nodded as he pulled a sheet of paper from the desk’s top drawer. He indicated the chair on the other side.
“Please have a seat and fill out this questionnaire.”
“What for?”
“Just a formality. It’s a nuisance, I know, but as I explained, circumstances have forced us into screening our clients.” He handed Jack a pen. “Please fill that out completely while I go get the appointment book and see about setting up your private reading.”
“By the way,” Jack said, “what’s a private session cost?”
“Five hundred dollars for a half hour; one thousand for an hour.”
Jack parked his gum in his cheek and gave a low whistle. “Pretty damn steep.”
“She is the best,” Foster said.
“I’ll be counting on that.”
Jack watched Foster leave, then turned his attention to
the form, pretending to study it. He knew he was on camera. The overhead smoke detector housed a wide-angle mini-cam; he’d seen the monitor in one of the back rooms last night. He figured Foster was watching him now, waiting to see if he rifled through any of the desk drawers. But Jack already had been through them and knew they held nothing but pens, paper clips, and questionnaires.
The camera was a good way to check out a potential sitter who was an unknown quantity, but it also came in handy when using the three microphones that had been installed here and there about the room. Sitters tend to yak it up before a group session, allowing an eavesdropping medium to pick up invaluable information; but it wasn’t really useful if you didn’t know who was talking.
“What’s going on out there?” he heard Madame Pomerol say through the tiny speaker in his ear piece. “Who’s the dork?”
“New fish.”
“Well, reel the fucker in, baby. Reel him in.”
Yeah, Jack thought. Reel me in.
The questionnaire contained a run of standard intake questions—name, address, phone numbers, and so on—but tucked into the middle was a box for the client’s Social Security Number.
Jack suppressed a smile. Yeah, right. He had a collection of SSNs, none of them legitimately his, but he wasn’t about to use one of them here. He wondered how many people, in zipping through the form, unthinkingly filled in that blank along with all the others, unaware of the wealth of information, financial and otherwise, it laid open to the medium.
Jack had used the Bob Butler name because he’d once met a Robert Butler who lived in the Millennium Towers, a high-rent high-rise in the West Sixties. He wrote in that address and put down one of his own voice mail numbers for home phone.
Foster returned with the appointment book. Jack watched his eyes as he scanned the almost completed questionnaire,
and saw an instant of disappointed narrowing—the blank SSN box, no doubt. But Foster said nothing. Wise. Better not to make an issue of the omission and risk showing too much interest in a client’s worldly status.
“Now,” Foster said, seating himself behind the desk, “I believe we can squeeze you in for half an hour on Tuesday. Would three o’clock be convenient?”
“How about now?”
“Oh, I’m afraid that’s impossible. Madame has a group reading at three.”
“Well, why don’t I sit in on that?”
“That would not do. These four clients always book readings together. An outsider at the table would upset the spiritual dynamics Madame has worked so hard to establish. Quite impossible, I’m afraid.”
This guy loved the word impossible. But Jack had something he was sure he’d like more.
“Oh, I don’t want to take part in the session,” Jack said, unbuttoning his shirt’s left breast pocket. “I just want to watch. Won’t say a word. I just want to be a, you know, fly on the wall. And I’m willing to pay for the privilege.”
Before Foster could say impossible again, Jack slapped a coin onto the desktop. It landed with a weighty thunk. He saw instant recognition in Foster’s eyes and watched his raised eyebrows stretch even further into his forehead when he saw the galloping antelope stamped into its gleaming gold surface. A one-ounce Krugerrand. He didn’t have to know the spot price of gold to realize that this newcomer was offering a hefty price to be a mere observer.
“That’s gold, Carl. And gold is what my uncle told me is the best way of dealing with the spirit world.”
“That’s very generous, Mr. Butler,” Foster said, licking his lips—the sight of gold did that to some people. “Tell me: Did your uncle have many dealings with the spirit world?”
“All the time. Never met a medium he didn’t like, is what my aunt used to say.”
“And how about you?”
“Me? This’ll be the first time I’ve been within a mile of a seance.”
“Do you have any idea what to expect?”
“My uncle once mentioned seeing ectoplasm and stuff like that, but I was never sure what that was all about.”
Foster reached out a finger and touched the coin. “I hope you realize it’s a most unusual request.”
He’d taken the bait. Now Jack had to set the hook.
“I wouldn’t know about that. Way I figure, it’s gonna take me a while to work out these issues with my uncle. A half-hour session won’t hack it. I’m going to need hours of sessions, a bunch of them. But before I invest that kind of dough, I want to know what I’m getting into. I want a look at what the lady’s offering. If I’m convinced she’s the real deal, then I’ll make an appointment for the next available slot she’s got free so we can get to work tracking down my uncle in the Great Hereafter. That sound fair to you, Carl?”
“What I think doesn’t matter,” Foster said. “It’s all up to Madame. I’ll go ask her.”
As Foster disappeared again, Jack leaned back and listened.
“You heard?” he said to his wife.
“Yeah, I heard. And he wants to pay with gold?”
“The real thing. Take a look.”
“Lotta money just to sit and watch and get nothing out of it. You think this fucker’s on the up and up?”
“Well, he’s put hard currency where his mouth is. And maybe a Krugerrand’s no big deal to him. Maybe he’s got a closet full of them.”
“All right. Let’s do it. But keep him away from the table, in case he’s some kinda nut case.”
“Will do.”
When I’m finished, Jack thought, you’ll wish I’d been a nut case.
Foster returned and told Jack, yes, he could observe the group reading as long as he agreed to remain in his seat
and speak not a word. Jack agreed and the Krugerrand went into Carl Foster’s pocket.
He cooled his heels awhile till the sitters showed up for the group reading. The four middle-aged women, two blondes—one heavy, one a bulimia poster girl—a brunette, and a redhead arrived as a group, all oozing Prada, Versace, and other overpriced designer wear he didn’t recognize. On Jack’s visit here last night he’d found dollar signs drawn next to their names in one of the Fosters’ notebooks. Not only did these four book regular sessions, but they were very generous with their “love donations.”
Their names slipped past him but Jack did his best to be pleasant and charming when introduced to the four. They could queer his whole plan if they objected to his presence. At first they were cool to him—probably put off by his mullet head and odd attire—but once they learned he was a psychic virgin they warmed up, apparently delighted for the chance to make a believer out of him. They gushed about Madame Pomerol’s powers, but not one of them mentioned her mishap last night. Apparently they didn’t read the Daily News.
Soon enough the big moment came and they were ushered into the reading room. Jack hadn’t fully appreciated the room last night because he and Charlie had used flashlights. Now that it was fully illuminated, he was struck by the sheer weight of the decor. Velvet drapes in heavy folds, thick carpeting, satin-flocked wallpaper—all in various shades of red. Suffocating, like the inside of a coffin.
So this is what it’s like to be buried alive.
He watched as Foster seated the four ladies around an ornate round table under a huge chandelier suspended over the center of the room.
Four sitters at five hundred a pop, Jack thought. Beats my hourly rate by a parsec or two.
Foster then indicated a lone chair set against a side wall, maybe a dozen feet from the table, for Jack.
“Remember,” he said in a low voice. “You are here to
observe. If you speak or leave your chair you’ll disrupt the spirit presences.”
Jack knew the only presence he’d disturb would be Carl Foster, slinking around after the lights went out. But he simply nodded and looked serious.
“Gotcha.”
Foster exited and a moment later he heard him say, “Okay, the fish are in the barrel Get out there and start shooting.”
Finally Madame Pomerol herself appeared, her short, dumpy frame swathed in a flowing, pale blue, gownlike get up, beaded to within an inch of its life; some sort of white turbanlike thing sat on her head. Jack barely recognized her. But then, he hadn’t seen her at her best.
Madame greeted the four sitters warmly, smiling and chattering in a French accent that had not been in evidence last night when she was cursing at Carl and their car.
Finally she came over to Jack and extended a ring-laden hand, dangling at the wrist as if awaiting a kiss. Jack rose and gave it a quick shake as unbidden visions of the woman naked and bound with duct tape swam through his head. He shuddered and chased them away.
Clothes make the woman too.
“You are chilled, Monsieur Butler?”
Her ice blue eyes glittered at him. If she had any facial irritation from the duct tape, she’d hidden it with make-up. Her thin, lipsticked lips were curved into a smile.
“No, ma’am. I just never been to one of these things before.”
“Nothing to be afraid of, I assure you. You are observing, yes? So just hold your seat and your tongue and I will show you wonders that are, quite simply, incroyable.”
Jack smiled and nodded as he reseated himself, knowing nothing she could conjure here would come within light-years of the reality he’d experienced since last summer.
She hit a light switch on her way back to the table. This turned off the spotlights recessed in the ceiling, but the chandelier remained lit.
Madame Pomerol made some introductory remarks, explaining—“for the benefit of our guest”—how she would go into a trance that would release ectoplasm from her body and open a gateway to the Other Side. Her spirit guide, an ancient Mayan priest named Xultulan, would then speak to the living through her.
“One more thing before we proceed,” she said in a grave tone. “I know my four dear friends at the table are well aware of this, but I must repeat it for the sake of our newcomer. Should ectoplasm manifest itself, please, please, please do not touch it. It exudes from my body and soul, and contact with anyone else will cause it to flee back into my body. The sudden return of so much ectoplasm can harm a medium. Some of us have actually been killed by recoiling ectoplasm that was touched by heedless clients. So remember: gaze upon it in wonder, but do not touch.”
Jack tuned her out. The rap was standard stuff; only the names changed from medium to medium. He was waiting for the lights to go out and the show to begin. That was when he’d make his move.
Finally the four sitters and the medium had laid their hands flat on the table. The clear bulbs on the low-hanging chandelier faded, but the few dim red ones among them remained lit. Darkness swallowed the rest of the room, but the table and its occupants were bathed in a faint red glow.
Madame Pomerol began a tuneless hum, then let her head loll. Soon the table began to tip to the accompaniment of giggles and gasps of wonder from the sitters. Their chairs, however, stayed flat on the floor. Charlie had given his brother’s operation a leg up, so to speak, over Madame’s.
And then the lady let loose a long, low moan that echoed throughout the room. Jack realized then that she had a wireless microphone hidden on her—in that turban thing, he’d bet—and her husband had just turned it on. Impressive reverb effect. No doubt she had an earpiece just like Jack’s so Carl could cue her when a sitter asked a tough question.
Another moan, and then something happened. Jack heard
one of the sitters gasp as a pale glow appeared atop Madame Pomerol’s head.
Hello, Mr. Ectoplasm, Jack thought.
The glow expanded to a rough circle behind her, framing her head like a halo. It hovered there a moment, then began to flow upward, streaming from her head in a ghostly plume, six, eight, ten feet into the air, and then it pulled free of the medium and began to undulate back and forth above her.
“Xultulan, hear my call,” Madame Pomerol intoned, her voice echoing again. “Lend us your otherworldly wisdom as you lead us to the souls of the departed. I have with me four seekers after the dear departed …”
Yeah-yeah-yeah, Jack thought, reaching inside his shirt. No sense in waiting any longer. Besides, her phony accent was wearing on him.
He found the lipstick-size remote stashed inside his belly padding and located the business end. He fixed a shocked expression on his face, then pressed the button with his thumb.
The overhead spotlights blazed to life to reveal a shocking tableau.
The four sitters and Madame Pomerol sat in their places, but behind the medium stood a man dressed from head to toe in black—his turtleneck and slacks were remarkably similar to Carl Foster’s, but he’d added black gloves and a black ski mask with narrow slits for eyeholes. He held two long black manipulating rods from which a billowy length of chiffon dangled. The sudden illumination revealed him swinging it in undulating arcs through the air above his wife. A scream from one of the women—she apparently thought the room had been invaded by some weird terrorist—froze him in mid-wave.
Jack caught a brief, sudden glare from Madame Pomerol as her eyes bored into his, and was glad he’d prepared his expression beforehand.
Suddenly she laughed. “You should see your expressions!” Another laugh. “Carl, our little demonstration really
took them by surprise!” She began to applaud. “Magnifique! Magnifique!”
“I … I don’t understand,” one of the blondes said.
Madame Pomerol looked over her shoulder and laughed again. “Take off that mask, Carl, and put down those silly sticks.”
“I demand an explanation,” said the redhead.
“And you shall have one, Rose,” Madame said, fully composed now. “If you read the papers, I’m sure you know that fake spirit mediums are popping up all the time, making fantastic claims to prey on the needs of gullible believers, trying to entice them away from those, such as myself, with the true gift. Carl and I arranged this little show to demonstrate how easily one can be fooled. I control all the lights here, of course, and when I deemed the time ripe, I turned them on so that you might witness charlatanry and fakery in media res.”
Whoa! The lady throws in a little Latin.
Jack wished he had a way to work the remote again. Nothing he’d love more now than to start turning the lights. off and on while she was spinning out her line of crap. But he couldn’t allow himself to be seen reaching into his shirt.
It was such a weak line, though, straining toward the breaking point under the transparent weight of its own bullshit, that he didn’t see any need to help it along. He had to strain to keep from laughing out loud.
Had to hand it to the lady, she was glib. Delivered her lines with utter conviction. But any minute now these four sitters would begin to scatter, fleeing this Temple of Eternal Wisdom to tell all their rich friends and everyone else they knew that Madame Pomerol was a class-A fake. Word would spread like a virus. If she was bent out of shape before about losing a few suckers, just wait till these four got through talking. She’ll qualify as a Cirque du Soleil contortionist.
“Really?” said the other blonde. “You staged this all for us?”
“Of course, Elaine.” She pointed to Jack. “And that was
why I broke with my usual procedure and allowed a newcomer to observe a reading. I wanted Mr. Butler to witness firsthand the cheap tricks of the conscienceless swindlers who sully the reputations of all the truly gifted spirit mediums.”
As the sitters stared at Jack he saw something in their eyes, something he didn’t want to see.
No. This can’t be. They’re buying into her lame-o story. I don’t believe this. How can they be so gullible?
An unmasked Carl approached the table with the material he’d been waving in the air.
“See?” he said, grinning as he held it out for the ladies to feel. “Nothing more than cheap chiffon.”
“But it looked so real,” the brunette said. “Exactly like when ectoplasm comes out of Madame during—”
Madame Pomerol cleared her throat and rose to her feet. “I think it is time for a little break. Please wait in the outer room while Carl removes these tools of chicanery. In a few minutes we will reconvene and make true contact with the Other Side.”
Jack followed the women into the waiting room. As soon as the door closed behind them, he heard Madame Pomerol say, “What the fuck just happened?”
“I wish I knew,” her husband replied. “I can’t imagine how—”
“Fuck imagine! Find out! I want the real story, not your fucking imagination! The electronics of this operation are your responsibility and obviously you fucked up!”
“I didn’t fuck up! I haven’t changed anything!”
“Well, something’s changed. Find out what!”
“I’m going to check that switch.”
“Shit! I’ve never been so embarrassed in my whole fucking life!”
“But you handled it beautifully.”
“Yeah, I did, didn’t I. And those four bimbos swallowed it. Do you believe that? Sometimes I’m ashamed of the caliber of people we have to deal with. I mean, how fucking stupid can you get?”
Jack wished he had the ability to play this conversation through a speaker in the waiting room. If only he’d thought of that. He’d heard Madame Pomerol’s salty tongue last night and should have seen this as a golden opportunity to let her clients know what she really thought of them.
The Fosters lapsed into silence while Jack wondered how to play Madame Pomerol’s sitters. He decided to listen first. Maybe he could find a way to salvage the day. He sidled up to the redhead whose name he remembered was Rose.
“Well,” he asked in a low voice, remembering the hidden mikes, “what do you make of this?”
“I think it’s stunning,” she said. “What courage!”
“I feel so honored,” said the dumpy blonde. “To think, she chose us—us!—for this demonstration! I can’t wait to get into my psychic chat room and tell everyone how wonderful she is!”
The will to believe, Jack thought, fighting a wave of leaden chagrin. Never underestimate the will to believe.
And that was just what he’d done.
He remembered an experiment James Randi once ran on psychics and their. marks. He set up a pair of sitters with a psychic, and after the reading they emerged very impressed with how the psychic had been able to see right into their minds. When Randi showed them a videotape of the session and pointed out that the psychic averaged fourteen or fifteen erroneous statements for every correct one, the sitters were unfazed. Even with the evidence of a poorly done cold reading staring them in the face, they remained impressed by the handful of correct guesses and disregarded all the wrong ones.
The will to believe …
Jack saw two options. He could show the women his remote and tell them he’d rigged the lights to expose Madame Pomerol as a fake. But he doubted very much that he’d sway them.
The will to believe …
The other was to play it cool and return for another go at the Fosters.
He decided on number two.
“Shit!” Jack heard Foster say. “Look what I found in the light box!”
“What’s that?”
“A remote control on-off switch!”
“Fuck me! You’ve gotta be kidding!”
“Believe me, I know these switches.”
“You think it’s that new guy?”
“Could be, but how would he have got in here to install the switch? And don’t forget, he paid us in gold.”
“Gotta be those niggers then! Fuck!” She then began stringing together innovative combinations of every four-, ten-, and twelve-letter expletive known to humankind.
“You think so?” Foster said when she ran out of breath.
“Fuck, yes! They’re the ones who tied us up last night and—”
“That was a white guy.”
“Did you see him!”
“No, but—”
“Then what the fuck do you know?”
“It was a white guy’s voice.”
“It was them, I’m telling you! They must’ve taken our keys and come here and fucked us up. Who knows what else they’ve done! They’re gonna pay for this. Oh, are they gonna fucking pay!”
This wasn’t going the way Jack wanted. The whole idea of coming here had been to distract them from the Kentons.
“All right,” Foster said. “Let’s just say it was them. After what happened, do you really want to risk going back to Astoria? Our car’s impounded, all our credit cards are gone, not to mention the humiliation of having to walk around Lower Manhattan dressed in cardboard.”
“They’re gonna pay! Maybe not this week, and maybe not next, but first chance we get, we’re gonna fuck those niggers over good!”
Conversation between the two Fosters stopped, and Jack assumed that the Mrs. had stomped off while Carl reassembled the light switch.
Jack and the four women hung out for another ten minutes or so, then Foster reappeared to welcome them back into the reading room.
Jack hung back.
“Is something wrong, Mr. Butler?”
“Yeah. I think I’ve seen enough.”
“I hope there’s no misunderstanding here. You see—”
Foster thought Jack was bailing out. He cut him off to put him straight.
“I think that was real gutsy of her to pull that stunt. That shows me she’s got real confidence in her powers. I’m totally impressed.”
Foster switched gears like a Formula One driver. “Well, I took you from the start as a man of intelligence and discrimination.”
“So when’s the soonest I can book my own private session with the lady? You told me you had half an hour open Tuesday afternoon. Nothing at all tomorrow?”
Foster pulled the appointment book from the desk drawer and thumbed through the pages. He frowned.
“I’m afraid not. Tuesday is the soonest. Is three o’clock good for you?”
This lady was doing gold-rush business.
“I guess it’ll hafta be. I’d really prefer an hour but, maybe a half-hour session for starters is best. You know, to see if she can make the right contact.”
“Oh, she can, I assure you.”
“Okay, see you then.”
Jack let himself out and made for the elevator. Once inside and headed down, he slammed a hand against the wall of the car. Damn. He’d read this one all wrong. He saw what his mistake had been: He’d tried to strike at the Fosters indirectly, through their clientele. Wrong angle. He knew now he’d have to take the battle directly to them.
He had a half-formed plan of how to do that. He’d need the Kenton brothers’ help to fill in the rest. He just hoped Madame Pomerol wouldn’t be able to wriggle free next time.