"I've got company."
"What am I, a priest? I don't want to talk to her; I want to talk to you. C'mon, brother. Would I be out here on the street calling you at this hour of the morning if it weren't serious?"
"Damn right you would." He paused, chuckled evilly. "How are the tympani lessons going?"
"Garth, let me come up."
Something in my voice must have struck a chord. There was a pause; then: "Okay, Mongo. But if this is a joke, I'm going to kick your ass. Fair warning."
"It's no joke."
"Bring coffee."
"I've got coffee."
Garth, dressed in a robe, met me at the door to his apartment. Unshaven, his thinning, wheat-colored hair uncombed, he looked as our father had looked early mornings on our Nebraska farm where we'd grown up. Garth and I had come a long way from the Midwest, by very different routes, and had both ended up in New York within a few months of each other. We liked that, liked each other. I owed the man; he'd helped me survive a dwarf's cruel childhood and adolescence.
Without a word, Garth reached down into the bag I was carrying and took out a container of coffee. He opened it and swallowed a large mouthful of the lukewarm liquid. Finally he looked at me, yawned. "You look like hell, Mongo. Come in and sit down."
I followed him into the living room and went straight to the bar, where I poured a stiff shot of Irish whiskey into my coffee. I drained off half of it, poured in another shot. That made me feel a bit better. I took the gown out of the bag and showed it to him.
"Does this mean anything to you?" I asked.
"Occult symbols," he said, examining the garment and nodding. "It could be a witch's robe if it were a little bigger. Where did you get it?"
"The little girl who was wearing it is in the hospital right now, in a deep coma. When you check the sheets this morning, you'll find that a man by the name of Frank Marlowe burned to death in his apartment about three o'clock this morning. The girl's his daughter. I was there, and it had to be a chemical fire; it was very hot, smelled like hell and formed an almost perfect circle around the bed."
Garth, wide awake now, held up his hand to stop me. "Whoa, brother. You're saying you think somebody killed this Marlowe?"
"Right. And whoever it was did something to the girl and dressed her in that gown. I-"
"Hold it," Garth said tersely. He rose and went into the kitchen. I heard him talking on the telephone, and a few minutes later he came back into the living room. He lighted a cigarette, then tilted his head toward me in what might almost have been a nod of approval. "Stop down at the station house later, okay? We'll want a formal statement from you."
"When I get time. I was about to say that the girl's doctors don't know what's causing her coma. There doesn't seem to be anything physically wrong with her-at least nothing they've been able to detect."
"There are drugs that can put a person into a coma."
"I know. If she is drugged, the problem is identifying the drug before she dies. Obviously, whoever drugged her didn't intend for her to die right away; she was dressed in that gown, then left outside the circle of fire where someone could find her before the blaze spread."
"Strange," Garth said quietly, pulling at his lower lip.
"Yeah. I have to find out what's going on-in a hurry."
Garth got up, pulled open the draperies and stared out into the wet morning. The vanguard of the working people was beginning to fill the city, and the hissing sound of tires on wet pavement drifted up from the streets below. "What kind of son-of-a-bitch would do that to a kid?" he growled.
"You're the one who's been working that side of the street; I was hoping you'd be able to tell me."
He turned back to me, ground out his cigarette and lighted another. He took a deep drag, then blew the smoke out with a sigh of exasperation. "I deal mostly with a lot of wackos," he said. "I get groups sitting around a stinking, decaying body for a week while they try to raise it from the dead. I get small-time bunko artists, and the idiots who get taken by their mumbo jumbo. Every once in a while I tie into something big like the Son of Sam case, where some poor bastard thinks he's possessed by demons and starts killing people. But most of the stuff I see is small potatoes-cases with losers who got tired of being screwed by the natural and hoped to do better with the supernatural. There's always someone around to oblige them. This business that you describe, if you're right about it being a setup, sounds pretty sophisticated; you've got chemicals, drugs and a locked door."
"I thought all the real weirdos were in Southern California."
"The organized weirdos are in Southern California. Not counting victims, New York really has two layers of people involved in the occult. There are a lot of cocktail-party fortune-tellers, of course, but there are also some very sophisticated people who are very much into what they're doing."
"What do the symbols on the gown mean-if they mean anything?"
"I don't know," Garth said, shaking his head. "But I can think of a couple of people who might. The guy I'd really like you to talk to is Michael McEnroe. He's a clairvoyant, psychic and teacher who lives down in the Village; supposed to be a real saint. The problem is that he's in India." He paused, rubbed his forehead. "You might talk to John Krowl. He works out of a brownstone in Brooklyn, just across the Manhattan Bridge. I'll give him a call for you."
"What does Krowl do?"
"He reads hands and tarot cards. He used to be one of McEnroe's students until they had a falling-out of some kind. He's a very heavy fellow."
"Meaning what?"
"Meaning. . he's heavy," Garth repeated, raising his eyebrows. "Krowl seems to be able to do exactly what he claims he can do: read your past, know your present-and maybe predict your future."
"Christ, Garth, you sound as though you're starting to take this shit seriously."
He didn't smile-didn't say anything. My words seemed to have triggered a whole train of thought in him, and for the moment he was lost in it. I was about to say something else when a tall, pretty redhead with green eyes stepped into the living room. She was dressed in one of Garth's shirts. My brother introduced her as Regina Farber.
"So you're Mongo," the woman said in a throaty whisper. "I've heard so much about you!"
"At your service," I said with a bow.
"Garth talks about you all the time."
"Quiet, Regina," Garth said with a good-natured growl. "The man's conceited enough as it is."
"I've got to get along, Garth," I said, tapping the face of my watch. "How about giving this Krowl a call now? I'd like to see him as soon as possible."
"Hey, come on. It's six o'clock in the morning. You're not going anywhere until you get some food in your belly and some sleep."
"I'm in a hurry."
"Sure you are. You haven't slept all night, and you haven't eaten. You go out of here now and you're going to fall right on your dwarf ass. That's not going to do you-or the little girl-any good. You know I don't give a damn what happens to you, but for the sake of the girl I'd like your brain to be functioning in full gear. So you're going to have something to eat, take a bath and sleep before you go back into the arena. In the meantime, I'll see what I can find out. Okay?"
Garth was playing Mother. I decided to let him get away with it, because he was right.
"I'll make us something to eat," Regina said, gliding on her long, slender legs toward the kitchen.
Garth turned serious again. "You talk about witchcraft and Satanism," he said, lowering his voice as though he didn't want the woman in the kitchen to hear. "Ever think about Charles Manson?"
"Have I ever thought about Charles Manson? Yeah, I've thought about Charles Manson; it's my business to think about nice folks like that."