Carnival of Shadows (24 page)

“You would do well on Capitol Hill, young man,” Hoover said with a careful smile. “I shall have to keep an eye on you.”

Hoover looked at Travis unerringly for one moment, and then he smiled once more, this time in a somewhat forced fashion, as if friendliness was as much a stranger to him as Communist sympathy, and then he left the room. Travis was left with the feeling that he had somehow said the wrong thing, but then wondered if everyone felt that way around J. Edgar Hoover.

Later, Chief Gale came to see him.

“You impressed the director,” he said, “but he feels that you need to expand your tolerances.”

Travis frowned.

“Too rigid,” he said. “His exact words? New ideas were never discovered by men with preconceptions. That’s what he said, Agent Travis.”

“I cannot change who I am,” Travis replied.

“You don’t need to change who you are,” Gale replied. “You just need to change the way you see everyone else.”

It was that comment, that specific comment, that came to mind as Travis sat there in his car. And just as had been the case with Donald Gerritty, both the killing of his wife and his own suicide, so it now was with this current investigation. Hungary. Fekete Kutya. A killer had been killed.

Michael looked out toward Slate’s caravan. It was now almost dark. There was a light within the caravan and a silhouette within.

Shadow play
, Travis thought, and smiled to himself. Enough with Doyle and the Mironescu woman. Enough of their games.

Travis locked the car and started across to the caravan, feeling already that familiar tension in his temples.

16

Slate’s caravan was a little smaller than the Westfalia and set back beneath the trees. Travis did not see how he could have missed it when surveying the line of vehicles the day before.

“Agent Travis.”

Travis looked up. Mr. Slate stood on the upper step of the caravan entrance. Travis had seen him the day before when he’d spoken to the collective group, but now he was arm’s length away and appeared quite different. His features were aquiline, well defined, and his hair was cut a little longer than average. There was something altogether precise about his demeanor, as if someone had taken time to outline him with a fine black pen. Slate extended his hand then, and when Travis took it, he was aware of his own change of expression. Had he been focusing, he would have been less likely to react.

“Always gets ’em,” Slate said, and laughed. “Throws people off completely when they shake a hand with too many fingers.”

Travis didn’t know what to say.

“You don’t need to say anything,” Slate said, as if he’d heard the thought. “I am completely oblivious to anything anyone does or says, believe me. Come on in. You look like a man who needs a strong cup of coffee.”

“Thank you,” Travis said. “That would be good.”

Slate turned and entered the caravan, ducking his head as he went back through the doorway. Travis followed him, was surprised by the seeming spaciousness within the vehicle. Slate lived alone, evidently, for the bed at the far end was no wider than a shelf, and the accoutrements and utensils that Travis could see were suited to a bachelor, not a husband.

“We’ve not been introduced,” Travis said. “At least not formally.”

“I know who you are,” Slate said, “and I know why you’re here. My name is Slate, and I am a cardsharp, a conjurer, a magician, and a liar.”

“A liar?”

“It is all lies, Agent Travis. All of this. The carnival, the people who work here, everything. We make magic, we create illusions, we deceive and misdirect, and then we fleece the innocent, unthinking public for their dimes and dollars.”

“I think that’s perhaps a little harsh, don’t you?”

“I am not being serious, Agent Travis. We are here to entertain. We provide distraction from the trials and tribulations of everyday life, and then we are gone.”

Slate held out his right hand and then brought all seven of his fingers together as if snatching something from the air.

“Here,” he said, and then opened his fingers suddenly and blew into his palm, “and then gone…”

Out of nowhere, a white feather drifted up and then down toward the floor.

“Very impressive, Mr. Slate.”

Slate caught the feather before it touched down and handed it to Travis. Travis reached out to take it and then found himself touching nothing. The feather had gone, disappeared even as he was looking at it.

“Where did it go?” Travis asked, smiling.

“Perhaps it was never there, Agent Travis.”

Slate paused for effect and then indicated the table. “Please sit,” he said, “and I will fulfill my promise of a cup of strong coffee.”

Travis sat, found himself glancing around for any sign of the white feather. Slate had secreted it about his person somehow, but how he had done that, Travis could not guess. That was the skill of a sleight-of-hand artiste, however, a skill learned and then practiced again and again until it was seamless.

Travis did not sense the same degree of challenge from Slate. First impressions were of someone quite unassuming, despite the theatrics. Slate’s body language did not suggest resistance.

“Cream, no sugar,” Slate said, “strong enough to start a dead man’s heart.” He turned then and looked over his shoulder at Travis. “Perhaps not the best thing to say under the circumstances. I apologize.”

“No concern,” Travis said. “We so often deal with death with a sense of humor. It’s a natural defense mechanism.”

Slate busied himself with making coffee, and soon the smell of it filled the caravan.

“Tell me about Saturday night,” Travis said as Slate brought cups to the table.

“Saturday night was the busiest night we’ve seen for weeks.” Slate held Travis’s gaze for a moment and added, “Every once in a while, the stars are in our favor. The weather is good, the word of mouth spreads, there is a distinct absence of local preachers advocating temperance and sobriety, and the carnival is barely able to cope with the numbers that appear, and seemingly from nowhere. They just flood in by the carload and spend a small fortune.”

“And when the body was found?”

“Well, it was late. Perhaps eleven or thereabouts. I remember hearing the girl scream, and I wondered whether it was just someone playing a prank. Then there was all manner of confusion, and I went over there and saw John Ryan crawling beneath the platform to reach him.”

Travis took the photograph of the dead man from his jacket pocket and put it on the table.

“This is him, isn’t it?” Slate asked.

“Yes, that’s him.”

Slate picked up the photo and looked at it for a good while. “Not a clue,” he said. “I can’t say that I’ve never seen him before because in this line of work you see thousands of different people in a month, but he’s not familiar to me.”

Travis took the diagram of the tattoo and showed Slate.

“And this?” he asked.

“What is this?”

“It’s a diagram of a design found on the man’s body,” Travis explained, alert for any indication in Slate’s manner that he recognized it. “I wondered if you had ever seen anything like this before, this pattern, or if you had any idea why someone might have it tattooed on their body.”

“A tattoo, you say?”

“Yes, Mr. Slate, behind his right knee.”

“Fascinating,” Slate said, and took the piece of paper from Travis. “The design means nothing to me,” he said, his body language indicative of nothing but his own simple curiosity, “but tattoos are often used to indicate membership of some group, some organization, you know? In the Far East it’s very common.”

“You have been to the Far East?”

“I have been everywhere, Agent Travis,” Slate replied. “The Far East, Arabia, Mexico, England, Italy, Spain, France, Holland, South America. I am, as they say, a well-traveled man.”

“Might I ask how old you are, Mr. Slate?”

“I am fifty-one. In human years, at least.”

Travis frowned.

Slate smiled, gave a little laugh. “I am joking, Agent Travis. It is my nature to try to lighten everything a little. Please pay no mind to it.”

“You appear younger than you are,” Travis said.

“The penalty of wickedness is perhaps the appearance of youth. No one ever takes me seriously, you see?”

“Wickedness?” Travis asked.

“Perhaps too strong a word. Mischievousness. A general unwillingness to grow up, you know? Being an adult always seemed so insufferably dull to me.”

Travis smiled and sipped his coffee. The man might have been a little left of center, as seemed to be everyone he had thus far met, but his coffee was very good indeed.

“It is, isn’t it?” Slate said.

“Sorry?”

“The coffee. Good.”

“Er, yes,” Travis replied. “How did you know I just thought that?”

“I didn’t,” Slate said. “You tasted the coffee; your features relaxed a little. When something is good, we relax; when something isn’t, we become more tense. It is just observation, Agent Travis, not mind-reading… though if you want me to read your mind, I could have a go.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Travis replied. “So, back to the matter at hand.”

“The tattoo,” Slate said. “I have no idea at all. Sorry I can’t help.”

“That’s quite all right,” Travis said. “I appreciate your time and cooperation. This man’s death has an explanation, and I will find it.”

“Are you sure of that, Agent Travis?”

“Sure that I will find an explanation? Of course I am sure. Everything has an explanation.”

“Aha, that is where you appear to possess a great deal more certainty than I,” Slate said. “I have found quite the reverse, to be honest. The older I get, the more I see, the more people I meet, the more questions I have. And no, I do not believe that
everything
has an explanation.”

“I am not talking about the eternal questions, Mr. Slate. I am not talking about whether or not there is a God, or why we are here, or where we are going—”

“Oh, I have no problem with those questions,” Slate said. “Those are the easiest of all. I am talking about the difficult questions, the ones that no one seems to have been able to answer in all the eons of time.”

“Such as?”

“What is really happening in the minds of women. There’s one to begin with. That’s a question that will never be answered, wouldn’t you say?”

Suddenly Travis was presented with an image of his mother’s face. It was there, right there in front of him, almost as if she were seated before him instead of Slate.

It was the night before she died, those few moments where he seemed to make some sort of
connection
through the distance that existed between them. It was his mother, the woman he remembered, the woman who had given birth to him, who had raised him, the woman who had taken a table knife and driven it through his father’s eye…

Will haunt you forever, kiddo. Gonna be in your dreams, your nightmares, your waking thoughts… always and forever…

“Agent Travis?”

Travis looked at Slate.

“Are you all right, Agent Travis?”

Travis felt as if there were no air at all in the caravan.

“I need to step outside for a moment,” he said.

Travis got up, knocked over his coffee cup, and the last inch of coffee spread across the table. He looked down at it. He saw red wine on the floor of Esther’s veranda. And then he saw blood on the wooden floor of the Flatwater house…

“I’m so-sorry,” he stuttered.

“It’s all right,” Slate said. “It’s nothing. Go… step outside. Get some air.”

Travis headed for the door, opened it, narrowly missed striking his head on the upper frame, and then almost lost his footing down the narrow steps to the grass.

He stood there for a moment, a real sense of tension in his head, his throat, his chest. He looked out toward the central marquee, now lit within, and there, before his eyes, he saw the Asian girl from the day before.

She was on a platform no more than three or four feet high. She was dressed in a skintight silver outfit, somehow bent over backward and yet looking at him from between her own legs. She was smiling directly at him, no doubt about it, this image of utter impossibility, as if she had somehow been broken in half and put together incorrectly.

He remembered her name.
Akiko
. Autumn Child.

Travis turned back toward the caravan as Slate came down the steps after him.

“Are you all right, Agent Travis?” he asked.

“Ye-yes,” he said. He breathed again, felt the cool air fill his lungs. “I am okay. Just a little dizzy, I think.”

“Is there anything else I can help you with, or are we done?”

“I think we’re done, Mr. Slate. At least for now.”

Slate came forward, handed Travis the picture and the diagram.

“I hope you find the answers you’re looking for, Agent Travis,” Slate said. “So few of us ever do.”

Travis said nothing in response. He walked away, and only when he reached the edge of the road did he turn back.

Slate stood there, his hands down by his sides, but palms turned toward Travis. His expression was guileless and sincere, as if he were saying,
There is nothing else to see here, Agent Travis, nothing but what you see already.

Travis reached his car. He fumbled with his keys and dropped them. He snatched them from the ground, opened the door, and got in. Only when he’d slammed the door shut behind him and Slate had gone back into his caravan did he feel that he could think straight. He wondered if he wasn’t sick with something. He felt troubled; a sense of unease ran right through him like a virus, like some airborne infection that had somehow penetrated his skin and gotten inside.

He shuddered, tried to close his eyes. The sense of disorientation increased, and he opened them once more. He was surrounded by the ever-present feeling of being watched and yet had no rational explanation for such a feeling.

Whatever it was, it was not good, and to close his eyes to it—both physically and figuratively—would be to fail to see what was coming. For something was coming—of this he was sure—and somehow he knew it would not be good.