Caller unknown, p.9
Caller Unknown, page 9
A distance away there was the drone of vacationers’ outboards on the lake. Later, as it got dark, there would be fireworks, but this arm of Tranquility was otherwise quiet. The only neighbors, the Sproules, were abroad. He spent the day fishing off the dock, then reading. But in the late afternoon, Jim’s pickup nosed down the long gravel drive through the shadows of the pines and came to a stop in front of the porch.
Ed stood up and placed the book on the deck as his boss got out of the cab. He was carrying an object wrapped in oily rags. “Hey, kid,” he said.
“Hey,” Ed answered, eyeing the package in Jim’s hands.
Jim looked at it too. “Brought you somethin’,” he said, and handed it up to the porch. Whatever was inside the cloth package was weighty and metallic. Ed unwrapped the bundle and gawped. The gray mass of a pistol lay on the oilcloth.
By now Ed had studied guns and recognized it as a military-issue Colt. Its government serial number could be clearly seen, stamped into the metal above the right grip. “For me?”
Jim nodded. “Couldn’t think of a better person to have it.”
Ed looked from it to Jim. “This your Marine sidearm?” he asked.
Jim shook his head. “Not mine. Belonged to a friend: Sergeant Lenny Piazzola from Little Italy, NYC.” His face wrinkled. It might have been sadness or just the last afternoon sun in his eyes. “Cong ambush in ’71. Lenny went down first.” He hesitated for a beat, as if remembering. “Anyway, sometime during the shootin’ my rifle and sidearm were out of ammo, so I took Lenny’s sidearm. He didn’t need it anymore. Then the jets came over with the napalm. The treeline where the Cong were exploded. One of the finest sights I ever saw. When we got back to base no one worried about Lenny’s sidearm. The US military bought millions of M1911s in its time. What was one lost in a paddy? It’s nigh-on untraceable, that gun.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Ed said.
“Nuthin’ you need to say, kid. Just keep it to yourself. Stu and Bettie don’t need to know about it.”
Jim searched in the pocket of his parka and brought out a box of ammo and handed that over too. “Just wanted you to feel safe, you know?”
They exchanged looks, then Jim said, “Happy birthday, kid,” and got back in the pickup, turned it around and headed back to the bait store.
When the call came into the store a month later, Stu told Ed that Bettie had only days to live. Ed had the Colt concealed in his backpack when he went back to Boston.
It was eight years since Jim had taken it from his dead friend’s hand. It would be used once again. But not by Ed.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
He was too old for the Children’s Hospital now. He had a new shrink, Cowdray, who practiced out of a tree-lined street near Winthrop. Where Gant had all the genial eccentricity of a Doc Brown, Cowdray looked like a German scientist from an old war movie. Lean, thin face, aquiline nose, widow’s peak. He always wore a starched, white lab coat. His appearance was reflected in his manner: precise, somewhat formal, and cold. And very knowledgeable about the very issue that had baffled every expert in the Apostles case: their memory loss. Unlike Gant, he was happy to discuss the science with Ed, whom he deemed old enough to at least hear the facts, even if he was, for the moment, beyond a cure.
So it was that Cowdray laid out the history of amnesia and coercive persuasion, from Nazi experiments to the American POWs tortured by the communists in the Korean War, right down to the adoption of these same techniques by the CIA’s Project MKUltra, the mind control program that had run for twenty years between ’53 and ’73.
“What purpose was there behind this stuff?” Ed asked. He was both disturbed and pleased how Cowdray was so unguarded, almost empathically so, compared to the babying Gant, who had never touched on difficult subjects but skirted around the issues.
Cowdray quirked an eyebrow. “Why, to make the subjects of these experiments more… quiescent, shall I say. To control and subdue them. The hope was to perfect interrogation techniques. But some say it went further.”
“Further? In what way?” Ed asked.
Now Cowdray did hesitate, as if he realized he was perhaps straying into forbidden territory. He cleared his throat. “Shall I just say that some of those experimented upon became susceptible to what I would call triggers?”
Cowdray’s uneasiness only encouraged Ed. After hundreds of hours of one-way therapy sessions, it was now the psychologist who was on the hook. “What sort of triggers?” he asked.
Cowdray looked even more uncomfortable. “Well, in certain situations, prompted by actions, images, or even just plain words, something in their psyche takes over. They lose consciousness… act blindly, under the stimulus of those controlling them.”
Ed stared at the shrink. He was thinking of all the playground incidents—then, more lately, the dead deer. The violence and hostility of the other kids had triggered the blackouts in the former incidents. But the deer? He’d brought his own brand of darkness to that party.
“Is there any way of guarding against these… impulses?” he asked.
Cowdray frowned. “Impossible to say. These blackouts you have experienced and the, ahem, unfortunate consequences, I think are your psyche overloading and responding to some unremembered trauma. The brain shuts down as it purges itself through violence. It’s unusual but not unheard of. Look at the Viking berserkers, for instance: uncontrollable rage in a trance-like state.”
“So what can I do about it?” Ed asked.
Cowdray turned to the window and the sun reflected off his eyeglasses. Now he did look like the epitome of one of those Nazi scientists. “We’ll try some anger management techniques, of course. But ultimately the only way to overcome trauma is by confronting and defeating it,” he said.
Ed smiled back grimly. Catch-22: the only way to solve the problem was to invoke it. He didn’t think much of his chances if that was the only solution.
Cowdray held up a hand. It was near the end of their three-quarter-hour. Did he look relieved? “Anyway, this is just guesswork on my part. As I said, these experiments were just that—experiments. There is no actual proof that there are what might be called robot agents out there right now. There may be a simpler explanation for what happened to you, Ed. So let’s concentrate on that, shall we? Accentuate the positive.”
Ed tried the various therapies that Cowdray suggested but there was nothing the shrink could do about death. Bettie passed that early August. Cowdray told him to isolate his grief and put it to one side. But he found there was no need: he had detached from his adoptive parents long before.
Afterwards, Stu’s bubble burst. What little remained of his bonhomie and 100-watt smile vanished. He became dour and silent. He spent longer and longer hours downtown at his offices, and the little time he was at home he hid in his study, curtains half drawn even in the bright late summer, hunched forward on his wood swivel chair, the Tiffany lamp casting a kaleidoscope of color over his sunken, jaundiced, and unshaven face. The pipe was always clamped in his mouth, but never lit. He wore a gray cardigan even on the warmest of days. He was always looking at his plans, but there hadn’t been a mall opening for a good two years now. Ed wondered if he was drinking. If so, he went to some pains to hide it. There was never an empty bottle in the trash.
Stu neglected to go to church. Letters and circulars piled up on the hall table. Well-wishers appeared, then quickly disappeared, put off by Stu’s spiritless conversation. The rejected included hopeful divorcées and widows. Their casseroles went uneaten. Ed figured Stu could have done with one of those women around the house, putting things to rights, pulling him out of his study, sharpening up his dress, which now consisted only of shiny pants and moth-eaten cardigans.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
College loomed. Ed’s disciplinary record at Brookline High was an improvement on the many elementary and middle schools he’d attended in the town and adjacent neighborhoods. His grades were exemplary, good enough for Northeastern. He excelled in the humanities and, perhaps because of some mystery of his heritage, Spanish. People sometimes commented on his dark hair and olive complexion. He looked more Hispanic than Anglo-Saxon.
He’d hesitated over a major. Law school was the ultimate goal. He wondered if law would explain something about this strange world he had been dumped into. What he needed was an understanding of now. In the second year of Carter’s presidency the world was in churn: the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan, President Bhutto had been executed, Idi Amin overthrown, the Shah had been deposed and civil war had broken out in El Salvador. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold… He chose political science.
The terms of his adoption precluded a faraway campus. The distance between Brookline and the Northeastern campus on Huntington Avenue was barely two miles.
Though it had not been an issue these last four years, Stu was mindful of Ed’s socialization issues. A touch of his old, blustering stepfather came to the fore then. He arranged a single room for Ed and said, “Screw the expense.” Ed wondered at his generosity—the development business was clearly sinking.
Welcome Week at Northeastern was after Labor Day. Stu didn’t volunteer to get the Volvo out of the garage and drive him downtown. The car had sat idle since that last trip from the hospital carrying Bettie’s belongings. Ed was going to have to take the bus.
Stu saw Ed to the door, no further, then stared at his slippered feet.
“Well, here we are then,” he muttered, just as he had done so often before.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Ed said. He shook Stu’s limp hand, picked up his suitcase, walked up the front path and turned left toward the bus stop, vowing that he would not be back that semester.
His first stop was the dorm at Stetson East. It was a nondescript gray brick-and-glass block. A number of cars were double-parked on the street outside, disgorging eager-looking freshmen, half of whom seemed to sport beards, tie-dyed T-shirts, and bell-bottom jeans. The resident assistant, a kid not much older than the ones moving in, stood behind the desk in the hallway with a clipboard. He had a name tag that read “Garval” on his white Oxford shirt and the buttoned-up air of petty officials with clipboards the world over. A sign read, “All Visitors to Register at Front Desk. Please Present Valid ID.” It seemed even when you left home, rules followed you. Ed pulled out his billfold with his driver’s license and showed it to Garval.
Garval consulted his clipboard. “Constance, eh? One of our more favored guests. Single room. Sixth floor.” He handed Ed a key and a handout.
“House rules,” he explained. “No drugs, no alcohol, no visitors, especially broads, after ten p.m.” He gestured at the register on the desk. “Before that, all visitors in the book. Have fun.”
“How could I not?” Ed replied.
He took the elevator to the sixth floor. The single room’s window looked over Hemenway Street and Back Bay to Fenway Park. Though reception had been bustling with freshmen, these upper floors were quiet. Only an occasional echo of a voice or a door shutting came from the marble corridors below. Was he the only one on this floor? He sat on the unmade bed and contemplated this new life, trying to steel himself for Orientation.
There was a sudden rap on the door, startling him out of his reverie.
Maybe Garval had forgotten something. He went to the door and opened it.
It was not Garval but one of the other freshmen from the lobby. A small guy about five six; curly, gingery hair; alert, pale blue eyes popping out of a pale face; a shit-eating, slightly manic grin that made Ed instantly suspect he was on something. He wore an AC/DC T-shirt advertising the latest album, Highway to Hell; ragged jeans that looked like they’d been mauled by a wild animal; and sneakers that had once been white, but were now graying. Ed immediately felt stuffy in his polo shirt and chinos.
The small guy popped out a hand. “Moss,” he said.
“Err, Ed… Ed Constance,” Ed replied.
“Pleased to meet ya, Ed.” Moss jerked his head to the right. “I’m down the corridor.”
“Glad there’s someone else up here,” Ed said.
“Right? It’s like my father chose this residence because it’s totally dead.”
“Or maybe because of the RA.”
Moss laughed. “Garval? What a prick, eh?”
“Moss your first name?”
“My only name. Given names are given by the man, you know?”
If Moss knew how Ed had come about his first name, his view would have been doubly amplified, but Ed wasn’t here for the past. The future was now.
“So, what’s your major?” he asked.
“Whaddya think? Political science. Gotta understand the belly of the beast, you know? You?”
“Same.”
“Cool,” Moss said. “Say, how about some weed? I got some pretty good Acapulco Gold in my room.”
Ed really didn’t want to get strung out on his first day. “Maybe later,” he said. “I was going down to Krentzman for Orientation.”
“You doing all that ‘Go Huskies’ shit?”
“Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, you know?”
Moss laughed. “OK, come on then—I guess it might have unintentional entertainment value.”
So they went out together. The weather was early-fall beautiful, in the mid-70s. For Ed it felt wonderful to be alive, to be away from Winthrop and Stu. And, after the years of struggle at school, of being called “spic” and “alien,” it felt good not to be picked on in a new place; to make a friend instantly and apparently without effort. The world seemed to smile on him that late morning.
They walked the five minutes through Opera Place to the crossing that led over Huntington Avenue to Krentzman Quad. The green space ahead was enclosed by three of the main university buildings and awash with freshmen, some sporting Huskies T-shirts, others Northeastern baseball caps. There were dozens of tables manned by faculty members with information on the various courses, seniors advertising every society and campus magazine under the sun, banners announcing coming concerts, talks, and sporting events.
The pathway was blocked by a smiling young woman handing out freshman wristbands. Ed worried that Moss would bridle at the idea of being forced to wear such a thing, but instead he seemed instantly taken by the girl and fell into an animated conversation with her. Ed took his wristband and snapped it on without complaint and left them to it. He joined the line waiting to pick up information from the political science faculty table.
It was hot in the line and the students in front of him were taking their time grilling the teachers. Ed’s mood was changing—he felt a prickle of anxiety, always present in crowded places. He regretted not bringing some shades. A faint trickle of sweat made its way down his back. He pulled the collar of his polo away from his neck.
He looked away toward the steps leading up to the monumental facade of Ell Hall some fifty feet away. His gaze fell on an individual standing in the shade of the entrance looking in Ed’s direction, although, given the crowd, he could have been staring at anyone in the immediate vicinity. It was a tall, young man, his eyes hidden by shades, dressed in black jeans and a denim jacket. The hair was slicked back and it looked, despite the fact he seemed of student age, like he had a widow’s peak.
There was something about the intensity of that stare that made Ed think he was the one being observed. And then there was something, too, in the man’s posture that felt eerily familiar. Ed went cold. He had seen that person before. A long time before.
Déjà vu is just a trick—brain electricity delaying the transfer of a signal from one temporal lobe to another and making it seem that what you experience now you experienced also a long time ago. But something told Ed this feeling was no trick of the mind. He knew the person who was staring at him.
It was one of the seven. David.
His vision tunneled so he saw no one else and now he was sure that David was looking at him because a smile broke on the other young man’s face, a devil’s grin, and he nodded slowly at Ed.
Ed took a step away from the line. His vision was going dark. He was going down into silence. He reached out in front of him like a blind man. His hand was seized and he nearly screamed out but then he heard a voice come from the void. It was Moss.
“Hey man, you OK?”
Another voice cut in. Maybe the young woman Moss had been talking to. “Is he going to faint? He’s gone awfully pale.”
Ed felt Moss’s grip tightening on his arm as he swayed blindly. “Too much sun, I guess. Better get him back to the residence. I’ll see you at three, OK?”
The girl apparently retreated. “Hey, buddy, how’re you doing?” Moss asked.
“I’m OK,” Ed muttered. All he wanted was his sight back.
“You better be. I got a date with Madeline later.”
“It’s OK, leave me.”
“No way. You’re coming back to my room and getting straightened out. Screw these lame-ass meet and greets anyway.”
He took Ed by the arm and they retraced their steps across Huntington and Opera Place. Ed’s vision started seeping back, but he still felt faint.
Garval was still in the lobby of Stetson East.
“What’s the matter with your friend?” he asked Moss immediately on seeing them.
“Too much sun is all,” Moss replied.
“Yeah, like hell. Looks like he’s taken something.”
“Jesus, do you have to be so hard-ass?” Moss answered. “Can’t you see the guy’s unwell?” He led Ed away to the elevator before Garval could reply.
The elevator whooshed up and Ed fought the sudden vertigo. The doors opened with a ping and Moss fairly dragged Ed down the corridor to his room and deposited him in an easy chair. It seemed he’d had time to fix things up a bit in here. There was a stereo and some posters up, a coffee table with rolling tobacco, rolling papers, and a small freezer pack of grass.
