“Hello, Mongo,” Marsten said.
I absently slipped the money Kathy had given me into my pocket and shook the hand that was extended to me. “Hi, Jim. Good to see you.”
“Thanks for taking care of my daughter.” He looked at Kathy. “Are you all right now?”
Kathy nodded her head. Her money felt heavy in my pocket; I felt foolish. By the time I realized I probably had no right to help a seven-year-old child keep secrets from her father, Jim Marsten had taken the hand of his daughter and was leading her off down the hall. Kathy looked back at me once and her lips silently formed the word, please.
When they were gone I took Kathy’s money out of my pocket and counted it. There was fifty-seven cents.
I must have looked shaky. My brother Garth poured me a second double Scotch and brought it over to where I was sitting. I took a pull at it, then set the glass aside and swore.
Garth shook his head. “It can all be explained, Mongo,” he said. “There’s a rational explanation for everything.”
“Is there?” I asked without any real feeling. “Let’s hear one.”
Someone was calling my name: a child’s voice, crying, afraid, a small wave from some dark, deep ocean lapping at the shore of my mind. Then I was running down a long tunnel, slipping and falling on the soft, oily surface, struggling to reach the small, frail figure at the other end. The figure of Kathy seemed to recede with each step I took, and still I ran. Kathy was dressed in a long, flowing white gown, buttoned to the neck, covered with strange, twisted shapes. Suddenly she was before me. As I reached out to take her in my arms she burst into flames.
I sat bolt upright in bed, drenched in sweat. My first reaction was relief when I realized I had only been dreaming. Then came terror: I smelled smoke.
Or thought I smelled smoke. Part of the dream? I started to reach for my cigarettes, then froze. There was smoke. I leaped out of bed, quickly checked the apartment. Nothing was burning. I threw open the door of the apartment and stepped out into the hall. Smoke was seeping from beneath the door of the Marsten’s apartment.
I sprinted to the end of the hall and broke the fire box there. Then I ran back and tried the door to 4D. It was locked. I didn’t waste time knocking. I braced against the opposite wall, ran two steps forward, kipped in the air and kicked out at the door just above the lock. The door rattled. I picked myself off the floor and repeated the process. This time the door sprung open wide.
The first thing that hit me was the stench. The inside of the apartment, filled with thick, greenish smoke, smelled like a sewer.
There was a bright, furnace glow to my right, coming from the bedroom. I started toward it, then stopped when I saw Kathy lying on the couch.
She was dressed in the same gown I had seen in the dream.
I bent over her. She seemed to be breathing regularly, but was completely unconscious, not responding to either my voice or touch. I picked her up and carried her out into the hall, laid her down on the rug and went back into the apartment.
There was nothing I could do there. I stood in the door of the bedroom and gazed in horror at the bed that had become a funeral pyre. The naked bodies of Jim and Becky Marsten were barely discernible inside the deadly ring of fire. The bodies, blackened and shriveling, were locked together in some terrible and final act of love. And death.
“They were using combustible chemicals as part of their ritual,” Garth said, lighting a cigarette and studying me. “They started fooling with candles and the room went up. It’s obvious.”
“Is it? The fire was out by the time the Fire Department got there. And there wasn’t that much damage to the floor.”
“Typical of some kinds of chemical fires, Mongo. You know that.”
“I saw the fire: it was too bright, too even. And I did hear Kathy’s voice calling me. She was crying for help.”
“In your dream?”
“In my dream.”
My brother Garth is a cop. He took a long time to answer, and I sensed that he was embarrassed. “The mind plays tricks, Mongo.”
I had a few thoughts on that subject: I washed them away with a mouthful of Scotch.
“Excuse me, Doctor. How’s the girl? Kathy Marsten?”
The doctor was Puerto Rican, frail, and walked with a limp. He had a full head of thick, black hair and large, brown eyes that weren’t yet calloused over by the pain one encounters in a New York City hospital. He was a young man. The tag on his white smock said his name was Rivera. He looked somewhat surprised to find a dwarf standing in front of him.
“Who are you?”
“My name’s Frederickson.”
The eyes narrowed. “I’ve seen your picture. They call you Mongo. Ex-circus performer, college professor, private—”
“I asked you how the girl was.”
“Are you a relative?”
“No. Friend of the family. I brought her in.”
He hesitated, then led me to a small alcove at the end of the corridor. I didn’t like the sound of the way he walked and held his head: too sad, a little desperate.
“My name is Rivera,” he said. “Juan Rivera.”
“I saw the name tag, Doctor.”
“Kathy is dying.”
Just like that. I passed my hand over my eyes. “Of what?”
Rivera shrugged his shoulders. It was an odd gesture, filled with helplessness and bitter irony. “We don’t know,” he said, his eyes clouding. “There’s no sign of smoke inhalation, which, of course, was the first thing we looked for. Since then we’ve run every conceivable test. Nothing. There’s no sign of physical injury. She’s just… dying. All the machines can tell us is that her vital signs are dropping at an alarming rate. If the drop continues at its present rate, Kathy Marsten will be dead in two to three days.”
“She hasn’t regained consciousness?”
“No. She’s in a deep coma.”
“Can’t you operate?”
Juan Rivera’s laugh was short, sharp, bitter, belied by the anguish in his eyes. “Operate on what? Don’t you understand? Modern medicine says there’s nothing wrong with that girl. She’s merely dying.”
Rivera swallowed hard. “There must be something in her background: an allergy, some obscure hereditary disease. That information is vital.” He suddenly reached into his hip pocket and drew out his wallet. “You’re a private detective. I want to hire you to find some relative of Kathy’s that knows something about her medical history.”
I held up my hand. “No thanks. I only take on one client at a time.”
Rivera looked puzzled. “You won’t help?”
“The girl hired me to find something for her. I figure that covers finding a way to save her life. Do you still have the gown she was wearing when I brought her in?”
“The one with the pictures?”
“Right. I wonder if you’d give it to me.”
“Why?”
“I’d rather not say right now, Dr. Rivera. I think the symbols on that gown mean something. They could provide a clue to what’s wrong with Kathy.”
“They’re designs,” he said somewhat impatiently. “A child’s nightgown. What can it have to do with Kathy’s illness?”
“Maybe nothing. But I won’t know for sure unless you give it to me.”
“Hypnosis.”
“Hypnosis?! C’mon, Garth. You’re reaching.”
“Trauma, then. After all, she did watch her parents burn to death.”