Escape the Night (21 page)

Was she safe?

Safe, and asleep.

Filled with loneliness and self-contempt, Peter Carey slammed down the phone.

The telephone rang in the seedy hotel room; Martin checked his watch, read 2:15, and answered.

“Did you follow them?” the small man asked.

“I placed a bug beneath their table. It was difficult.”

“Necessary. I've played your tape of the Careys' luncheon. Based on voice analysis, Peter was lying.”

“Afterwards, he went to see his lawyer.”

“Then we need the notes of what was said. I must know his strategy toward Phillip.”

“I understand.”

“What did Peter say to his young lady?”

Martin had a sharp mental image of the woman, undressing. “He's consulting a psychiatrist. A man named Levy.”

“
Levy
.” There was a long pause. “Concerning his amnesia?”

The small man's query was quite soft; only Martin could have heard the constriction he was learning to associate with the name of Peter Carey. “I think so.”

“Make certain.” The small man's voice rose. “This will not wait.”

“It may take time,” Martin answered cautiously, “to learn so much.” His words were careful, correct; over years, his speech had come to parody the small man's. “After all, it took a lifetime for Peter Carey to become who and what he is …”

“No.” The small man's voice was curt and chill. “It only took one weekend.”

Staring into the bathroom mirror, William Levy re-lived the death of Charles Carey in his imaginings of the son.

He could still remember the book he had been reading when Ruth had called him, and how he felt. He rushed to Ruth's apartment: she wept, and he held her, so slight in his arms, as he had not done since the day their mother had slashed her wrists and bled to death on a patch of bathroom tile. Ruth never quite healed; for a time Levy could not cease imagining the pain of burning flesh. Now, twenty years later, he still grew sad at the approach of April, most beautiful of months.

He saw this sadness as the last tribute he could give to Charles Carey. The career that Charles had aided could be measured a success, its analytic process a bulwark against his bent toward mysticism, which frightened him. His own wife had died young, of leukemia, but she had loved him, he knew, and his concern for Ruth had softened his lack of children. Now he lived through his work and patients. If his failures troubled him, he considered them more bearable than his initial response to Charles's death: that he had killed his friend by failing to free him from his wife, and then had failed to help his son …

Today, with sickening suddenness, his guilt rose from the past.

Searching for Peter at Charles's funeral, Levy had encountered Phillip Carey for the first time. Peter was not there, his uncle murmured, the shock had been too great. Levy nodded; the boy was no doubt traumatized. Awkwardly, he offered his assistance: if he might visit Peter as a psychiatrist, or simply as an older friend …

“
No
,” Phillip had cut in brusquely. “I don't want him disturbed.”

Shaken, Levy stared at Phillip Carey. Phillip's answering stare was coldly vacant; his brother's death seemed to have left him close to catatonic. The boy would be well tended, Phillip added stiffly, he himself would see to that. Levy had withdrawn, confused; Phillip Carey was the kind of man who made one feel ambivalent. He could not tell whether Phillip's rebuff stemmed from some stubborn paternal feeling, or in resistance to a friend of Charles becoming close to Charles's son.

Nor, Levy now admitted, did he know whether his own retreat followed from his selfish wish not to live with Charles's death, or from something more he sensed in Phillip.

Ruth had been so distressed he could not then have shared this thought with her. Better, he had told himself, to let it die.

He had not seen Peter Carey again. Nor, in all the years since Peter arrived at his grandfather's firm, startling Ruth, did he ask about his appearance: with an almost peasant superstition, he wished for Charles Carey's son to have no face.

Now, twenty-three years later, the son he had not reached for still had nightmares of the father.

CHAPTER 3

Peter Carey stepped from the Aristocrat, dressed in the same tan corduroy sportcoat he'd worn eight days earlier. He spoke briefly; the doorman smiled at him, then hailed a taxi.

Martin flagged a second cab and followed Carey to the hospital.

Carey went through a door on the side of the sprawling complex running along East 76th Street. Martin waited across the street. He knew that Carey would not see him. Like most New Yorkers, Carey sensed the closeness of strange bodies; Martin kept thirty yards away.

He decided not to smoke for one hour.

Restless, Martin reflected; he guessed from the small man's tone that this visit would be the catalyst of his drama, although he did not yet know the reason.

In his mind he followed Peter Carey to the doorway of his father's friend.

Levy's blond young secretary cracked open his door. “Mr. Carey's here.”

“Step in for a moment.” Levy glanced up from his desk. “Tell me, what does young Mr. Carey look like?”

She shot him a curious glance. “Why?”

“Just that he's the son of an old friend, and I've never really seen him.”

“He's beautiful,” she smiled. “Very blond. Was the father like that?”

“No; auburn, really.” Levy felt himself relax. “You can send him in now.”

A moment later there was a knock on the door. “Come in,” he said.

A tall blond man leaned casually through the doorframe, head tilted to one side, and pierced him with startlingly blue eyes. “Complete with couch,” the familiar voice observed, and then Peter Carey flashed a grin.

The grin, and the face it came from, were Charles Carey's.

Levy's skin went cold: in all but Allie Fairvoort's hair, Peter Carey was an eerie replica of his father. “You
are
Dr. Levy, aren't you?”

Levy kept staring. “You wish to know what your father looked like? He looked exactly like you.”

“Well,” Peter smiled, “if I'd known that, I wouldn't have been so interested. You don't mind if I sit, do you?”

“No—of course not.” All at once Levy recalled the awkward freshman he had been. He gestured toward the chair in front of his desk. “You have photographs, surely?”

“I didn't for a long time—my uncle's not a sentimental man. But then your sister was kind enough to locate one.” There was a glint of amusement in the cobalt eyes. “I've since found a spot for it.”

Levy made note of the lethal flatness of Peter's last sentence. “Then you can see the resemblance.”

“To a point. But photographs can deceive.” Once more Peter's head tilted, as Charles's had, the smile at one corner of his mouth less than a smile. “Like memories.”

Levy fought back the sense that he was being toyed with. “Is that part of why you came here, Peter—for my memories of your father?”

“No—the part concerning memory is a little different. I suppose I need my own.” Peter's smile had vanished. “What happened is that I remember nothing about the weekend my parents died. All I have is the burning of my father's face, in a recurring nightmare that makes no sense.”

Absorbing this, his instinctive fear of Peter's dream mingling with the sense of their shared loss, Levy knew by intuition that there was something about Phillip and the photograph to which he should return. “This nightmare,” he ventured softly. “Perhaps you should describe it.”

As Peter recited the sequence of the dream, the coolness vanished from his face and voice, until Levy felt his pain. “Please,” he said as Peter finished. “Let me recommend someone.” He looked away. “I knew your father far too well.”

Peter waited until Levy's eyes met his again. “Then it would help for me to share that.”

The man in Levy shrank from the fiery image of Charles's death; the professional, from treating his son. “But you also wish for me to help you end this dream. No analyst can simply draw that from you, like venom from a snake. He must help you understand its meaning, however taxing or unpleasant. I'm neither objective, nor young enough. The process may take years …”

“Twenty-two years, do you think?” Peter's smile was as bleak as the words. “I was seven when I first woke up, screaming.”

Levy bent his forehead to his fingertips. “Then what is it that brought you to me now?”

“You were his friend.” Peter's gaze dropped. “There's a woman—Noelle Ciano. I'm afraid I'll lose her.”

“Because of this nightmare?”

“The accident—it seems to have had its effects.” Peter paused; Levy saw that self-revelation was painful. “I'm not able to trust easily, to give or receive affection. Somehow it's all tied up with Phillip …” He shrugged, cutting himself off. “I can't explain what I don't remember.”

“Is it so difficult to talk, Peter?”

Peter smiled faintly. “It's nothing I'm used to.” He glanced around the office. “Incidentally, I assume you take notes. Where do you keep them?”

“Locked in file cabinets, with each file numerically coded to a separate index of patient's names.” Watching Carey's eyes, Levy added, “What makes you ask?”

This time Peter did not smile. “Paranoia.”

“Your word, not mine. I was wondering if you had some special reason.”

Peter shifted in his chair. “A man named Clayton Barth wishes to buy our firm, which I don't wish to sell. He's rumored to use blackmail, psychiatric and otherwise.”

“And?”

“He's in contact with my uncle.” The clipped savagery of Peter's first reference to Phillip Carey was gone; he seemed almost shy. “As I say, I don't trust readily.”

Levy's memory flashed back to Phillip Carey at the funeral. “Especially Phillip?”

Peter's smile turned quirky and embarrassed. “Will you help me, then?”

Suddenly, Levy imagined Phillip, confronted with this double image, the hostile likeness of his brother. “This nightmare started when you were seven?”

“Yes.”

Levy rubbed his temples.
And you were six
, he thought,
when I let Phillip turn me away
. Almost to himself, he murmured, “Then four hours a week is not too much to ask.”

“Thank you.” Glancing up, Levy caught Peter's complex look of worry and relief, just before he rose. “Still nine o'clock?”

“Yes. Starting tomorrow, if that's all right.”

With a last, ironic smile, Peter Carey extended his hand.

As they shook hands, Levy felt for that brief instant that they were sealing some Faustian bargain. Later, when he had compromised all sense of his profession to help free Peter Carey from his past, he would learn what it was.

Fifty-five minutes after he disappeared into the hospital, Peter Carey strode out and again caught a cab. Martin caught another. As his watch hit sixty, he lit a cigarette.

The first cab careened down Fifth Avenue, taking Peter Carey to his office.

Martin touched his gun; Carey's visit to Levy stirred his imaginings, and not only of the woman. He wondered what secrets Carey left there, and how the small man, learning them, would touch the scales of Peter's life.

Stubbing out his cigarette, Martin counted the moles on the cabbie's neck.

Four.

Laughter echoed in the tunnel
…

Carey glanced up at the knock on his door; Ruth Levy looked inside to ask, “How are you this morning?”

“Ecstatic.” Carey smiled hastily. “A contented worker in America's happiest and most successful family-owned business. I think I'll go out and have children.”

“Try kittens first.” Stepping in, Ruth asked more softly, “I was wondering if you'd talked to Bill.”

Carey never felt quite ready for her. Framed in the doorway, she seemed dark, slim and ageless …

“Yes, thanks. I did.”

“I hope that he can help you.”

“Perhaps he can.” Carey watched her face. “I suppose that depends on whether I should be tampering with my memory.”

“I think it's always better to know.” Ruth's eyes flickered to the picture behind him; once more, Carey sensed the wordless second conversation running beneath their first, its silences more telling than speech. Abruptly, she asked, “Have you read that manuscript Phil brought in?”

Carey shook his head. “Give me a synopsis.”

“Subliminal violence.” Her smile was a small twist of the mouth. “The sex is a pervert's fantasy of Gestapo officers and women prisoners. You should read it.”

Inexplicably, Carey felt Ruth telling him that she did not trust his uncle. “I'll do that, Ruthie.”

“Good.” She gave the picture a last quick glance, and left.

It was midafternoon when Carey's overhead light went out.

He was on the telephone, negotiating with an agent. He tried his desk lamp without success; for an odd split second, he connected this with Clayton Barth. “Did your lights just go?” he asked the agent.

“Let me look across the hall—yeah, they're out.”

The man was twelve blocks away; Carey knew what would be happening next. He pushed Barth from his mind. “Might as well wrap this up,” he said. “We're not going anywhere.”

They talked ten minutes longer, sealing the contract at Carey's price, and then he called Noelle. “Stay at my place tonight,” he urged. “I don't want you alone, and the subway'll be hopeless.”

“I know—I'm going out now to get some pictures. I won't be through till five or so, and by then the phones'll be tied up.”

“Why not meet me around five-thirty, at the corner of Fifth and Forty-second. We'll walk.”

“But will we talk?”

“Even that.”