The wind picked up and blew hard at his back then, swirling dust around the old boxcar. There was a high, giddy whistling as it filled the car, as if it had been working on the door for a long time and was delighted to find someone had finally opened it the rest of the way.
19
HE CALLED ALYSSA BRADFORD from the car, sitting with the air-conditioning blasting and the vents angled so the cold air blew directly into his face. The old man from the railway museum was leaning against the door frame, watching him with a frown.
“Alyssa, I did have a few follow-up questions I forgot to ask,” Eric said when she answered. “The bottle of water you gave me… Can you tell me anything about it at all?”
She was quiet for a moment. Then said, “Not really. That’s why I wanted you-”
“I understand what you wanted. But I need a little help. It’s the only thing you brought me that first day. The only artifact of any sort you gave me. No photos, no scrapbook, just that bottle. I guess I’m wondering why you thought it was so special.”
He was staring at the Pluto boxcar, at the grinning red devil.
“It’s strange,” she said eventually. “Don’t you think it’s strange? The way it stays cold, the way it… I don’t know, feels. There’s something off about it. And it is the only thing-and I mean the only thing-that he had from childhood. My husband told me that he kept it in a locked drawer in his bedside table, and said the bottle was a souvenir from his childhood and that no one was allowed to touch it. As you can see, it meant a lot to him for some reason. That’s why I’m so curious.”
“Yes,” Eric said. “I’m curious, too.”
“When I talked to you at Eve’s memorial service,” she said, “and I saw how you intuited the importance of that photograph, I knew I wanted to give you the bottle. I thought you might see something, feel something.”
That damn photograph was why she had hired him, why she’d sent him here. He could have guessed it from the start but instead he’d chosen to believe her hollow assertions of being impressed by the film. Claire wouldn’t have been fooled.
“I think I need to talk to your husband,” he said.
“What? Why?”
“Because he’s the one who’s actually related to the guy, Alyssa. It’s his family, and I need to ask him what the hell he really knows about his father. What he’s heard, what he thinks. I need to ask-”
“Eric, the entire point of this film was that it would be a surprise for my husband and his family.”
I don’t care were the words that rose in his throat, but he needed to keep any touch of hysteria down, and he was close to shouting now, close to telling her that something was very deeply wrong with Campbell Bradford, and once he got started on that, it’d be rolling downhill faster than he could control, stories of phantom trains and whispering ghosts coming out, and then his reputation in Chicago would be crushed just as completely as the one he’d had in Hollywood.
“I’d like to ask you to rethink that,” he said. “I believe I’m going to need to find out a little more from him to make any progress.”
“I’ll consider it,” she said in a tone of voice that made it clear she would not. “But I’m heading out right now and I’m afraid I have to let you go.”
“One more thing, Alyssa.”
“Yes?”
“Is there any chance your father-in-law played the violin?”
“Yes, he played beautifully. Self-taught, too. I take it you’re having some luck finding out about him, after all.”
Eric said, “I’m learning some things, yes.”
“Well, I’m amazed you learned that, because he hated to play in front of people.”
“Really.”
“Yes. As far as I know, he would only play when he was alone, with the door closed. Said he had stage fright and didn’t like to be watched when he played. But he could play beautifully. And there was a quality to it… maybe it was because of the fact that I never saw him play and only heard it, but there was something about the sound that was absolutely haunting.”
He drove back to the hotel then, leaving the Acura beneath one of the few trees in the parking lot for shade and avoiding the bright light of the rotunda, sticking to the perimeter hallway. The headache was showing itself again but not yet at full strength, a scout party sent ahead of the battalion.
The first thing he saw when he opened the door to his hotel room was the shattered camera on the floor. The cleaning people had been in here, but they’d left the camera on the floor, clearly unsure of what the hell to do with what was obviously expensive equipment, even if destroyed.
He’d never even wanted to use that damn camera, a gift that felt like a taunt from his father-in-law, a reminder that the days when he’d used first-rate studio equipment were long gone. A reminder of his failure.
“Claire tells me you’re going to be doing something on your own,” Paul Porter had said. “Thought this would help.”
He’d emphasized the something, two unspoken questions-what and when?-clear in the word. And Eric had to thank him with false gratitude and put on a show of marveling at the camera, Claire standing beside him, watching it all with a smile.
She’d been on his ass for months, prodding him along when all he needed was some patience, and if she thought he missed the connection between all that and her father’s gift, she was crazy. Ever since they’d left L.A. she’d been after him for his plans, and though he’d satisfied her with them at first-write a script himself, get some financial backing, direct his own indie film and use that as a springboard back to the big time-it wasn’t long before she was dissatisfied with his efforts.
His efforts. In truth that wasn’t the best phrase, maybe. He hadn’t done all that much. Had not, for example, directed the film or sought financing or even written the script. Started the script, for that matter. It wasn’t something you could rush right into, though, you had to have the right idea first, and it was going to need to be a big idea, with the right scope and ambition, and then you had to let it gestate for a time…
Yes, he’d been slow. Or totally stagnant. And gradually the gentle prodding turned to full-on accusations and demands and then things were spiraling down fast and deadly. They’d had one terrible blowup when she happened into a bar and grill downtown for lunch with a friend and found him camped out there with three whiskeys already gone, this at noon. It had been a sighting that led to an unfair conversation later that night, a conversation that quickly turned angry, and when Eric stormed out of the house with a string of expletives and an upended coffee table in his wake, he’d done so with an expectation of returning in a few hours. He’d ended up in a hotel room instead, though, refusing to give her the satisfaction of surrender and one night in the hotel quickly turned to ten and then he was looking for an apartment.
The bullshit “career” he was involved with now had been as much a guilt trip as anything. He’d wanted to find something so pathetic she had to feel the weight of it. Instead, she’d just told him how glad she was to hear he was working again. Oh, and she was happy to know he could make use of her father’s camera.
“Made good use of it, Paulie,” he said and let the door to the hotel room swing shut as he got down on his hands and knees and began cleaning up the mess.
It was no good to be without a video camera, not with these circumstances, when he needed something to tell him what the hell had been real and what hadn’t. He still had the micro-recorder, though. He took that out when he had the camera cleaned up and played a few minutes of his talk with Anne McKinney, enough to verify that everything on the tape progressed as he’d experienced it. He was still listening to it when his phone rang, and he turned off the recorder and looked at the phone, hoping for Claire but instead finding a number he didn’t recognize.