Yeah. A major pain in the ass at times. A constant battle of wits. But he found it hard to imagine life any other way.
THURSDAY
1
"You're going to buy a map?" Abe said. "What for a map when you've got Mapquest?" He turned to his computer. "I'll look it up for you right now."
An hour after a simple breakfast of plain old Entenmann's crumb cake and newspaper skimming at Abe's rear counter—no story on finding Gerhard's body yet—Jack was readying to wander off in search of a New York state map. The one he had was falling apart.
"Don't bother. I've already got driving directions from Mapquest, but I like a map I can fold and unfold. I like to see the big picture."
"You want a big picture, I can get you a satellite photo of where you're going."
"No thanks. But you can do a reverse look-up on Doctor Levy's phone number for me."
"I thought you had an address already."
"I do, but I just want to check."
"You mean you want me to check."
"Okay, I want you to check. Please?"
Jack had been into computers from his early teens through his college years. But after he'd dropped out—of everything—he lost touch with the cyber world. His early years in the city had been a catch-as-catch-can existence, with no permanency, no way to stay wired in. Only in the past few years had he begun exploring the World Wide Web. A lot had changed in the years he'd been disconnected. He was still in an acclimation stage.
Abe, on the other hand, with his international connections and dealings, was a whiz—or as he'd say, a maven.
He watched Abe do some mousing and keyboard tapping, frown, do some more, then come up with…
"Nothing. The name and address connected to that number are restricted."
Jack shrugged. "I'll go with what I have then. How's the professor, by the way?"
Abe shook his head. "Again I dropped in on him last night. No change. His mind… I don't know. Still with the numbers."
"Shame. Okay, I'm off on my map quest."
"Wait. I just thought of something. Let me try a straightforward lookup." More tapping. "Ha! Here's an Aaron Levy, M.D., at twenty-six-eighty-one Riverview Road in Rathburg, New York."
"That's the address I have. Okay, we've found him. What can you tell me about him?"
Abe did his click-click-tap-tap thing and then smiled.
"Here's something mentioning him as an attendee at a fund-raiser for the Rathburg Public Library."
"Got a picture?"
"What for you want a picture?"
"Because I've got a lawyer's chance of heaven of getting through the front door to see this guy. I'll have to use some backdoor tactics. And to do that I need to know what he looks like."
"Here we go: 'Doctor Aaron Levy, associate director of patient care at the Creighton Institute, with his wife, Marie, and daughter, MolUe* at the same fund-raiser."
Abe turned the monitor toward Jack. He saw a smiling dark-haired man in his early fifties with a dark-haired woman of the same age, flanking a dark-haired girl who looked about twelve or so. The article, from the Rathburg-on-Hudson Review, had appeared two years ago.
"Perfect. Print that out for me, will you?"
"It's printing already."
"Great. And while we're waiting, see where I can find this Creighton Institute. I saw that mentioned on Gerhard's computer. Sounds like a hospital or something."
"Here it is: The Creighton Institute. And you'll never guess the address."
"Twenty-six-eighty-one Riverview Road in Rathburg?"
"You got it."
"Okay. That's where he works. But where does he live? There's gotta be a way—"
"Tax records, maybe. No, wait. Let me Google this." Abe started tapping again. "New… York… property… search…" He hit ENTKR. "Gevaltl Let me fill in these boxes. County • ■ • Westchester. Town… Rathburg. Name… Aaron Levy. Enter." A pause, then, "Here it is: Nine-oh-three Argent Drive."
Jack felt a little queasy as he said, "Print that out for me too."
Abe shook his head as he hit PRINT. "This is terrible."
Jack knew exactly what he was feeling.
"Because it's so easy?"
"Frighteningly so."
"Makes me glad I rent, Abe. Go back to that Creighton Institute. What else can we find out about it?"
"Let's see." After a few more clicks Abe leaned back and looked at him. "Oy. The full name is the Creighton Institute for the Criminally Insane."
Jack shook his head. "Swell."
2
Broadway seemed like a good place to find a map, so Jack ambled west.
Broadway ran north-south up here. A few blocks downtown, at 79th Street, it broke from the grid and started angling east, crossing the city on a diagonal all the way down to the East Village where it headed due south again.
He spotted a Barnes & Noble and saw a display of Kick in its front window. The cover was hard to miss with its bold black type and stick-figure drawing against a neon-yellow background.
He stared at the Kicker Man, feeling that same odd sensation.
Enough of this wondering. He needed to find out why that figure looked so… what? Familiar?
A placard with a similar color scheme posted behind the display read:
Join the kicker evolution!
Evolution?
He went inside, picked up a trade paperback, and flipped through it. Large type and a little Kicker Man in each of the breaks.
"Save your money, man."
Jack looked up and saw a long-haired guy in jeans and a tie-dyed shirt giving him a sidelong look.
"Say what?"
"That book." He spoke in a conspiratorial whisper from the corner of his mouth. "It's a load of crap, man."
Nodding knowingly, he moved off.
Well, well. A reader review. But not a helpful one. Jack expected a load of crap. He simply wanted to know how Hank Thompson had come up with that four-armed man.
He found a New York State map and headed for the checkout counter. On the way he passed a "New Paperback Fiction" rack where a cover caught his eye: cobalt blue with a pair of glowing yellow eyes—definitely not human—staring out above a pile of pills. He stopped when saw the title: Berzerk!
Those eyes were startlingly close to a rakosh's. And the pills… last spring he'd run up against a drug with a lot of street names, one of which was Berzerk—misspelled just as it was on the cover.
And then his heart stuttered a beat when he read that it was "a Jake Fixx novel" and "sequel to RakshasaV by P. Frank Winslow.
He snatched it from its rack and grabbed a passing employee—a twenty-something guy with thin hair and thick sideburns.
"What is this?"
The guy looked at Jack, then the novel, then Jack. "We call that a book."
A comedian. Yay.
"I know that. But who's this guy Winslow? How many of these has he written?"
The guy shrugged. "I dunno. You'll have to check with Information."
"But you work here."
"Yeah, but I just put them on the shelves. I don't read them. Sorry. Check with Information."
Jack did, but the kiosk was empty. He found the fiction section and searched through the W authors where he found one copy of Rakshasa. He checked out the cover and found the same cobalt blue, same glowing eyes, but instead of pills, a freighter floated in the foreground.
"Christ!"
He didn't know what was inside, but from the look of the covers it seemed like someone was peeking into his life.