Superstition (2 page)

Sam had to be careful here. He still didn't know who or what he was dealing with. The man across from him looked normal enough, civilized, thoughtful. But he couldn't be sure of anything anymore.

“Someone with your wife's name, or I should say using her maiden name, Joanna Cross, has been involved in a program I have been running for some time.”

Cazaubon looked at him with a disbelief that bordered on hostility. “That's impossible. I would have known about any such thing. You must have made a mistake.”

“Perhaps. If so, I'm here to clear it up.”

Cazaubon got to his feet with a restlessness that, it seemed to Sam, he was trying to conceal. He walked over to the fireplace, looked down into the empty grate, then turned once more to his visitor.

“You mean that some woman has been going around using my wife's identity? Is that what you're saying?”

“I don't want to alarm you. I'm sure there is some explanation…”

“Forgive me, I think this is very alarming indeed,” Cazaubon said, his tone hardening. “And quite possibly a matter for the police.”

“No, it's not something for the police,” Sam responded with more weariness than urgency, as though such a course would merely be a waste of time. “As a matter of fact the police are already involved—in a way.”

“How?” Cazaubon shot back, his voice tightening with concern.

“Two men have died today.”

Seeing the flash of alarm in the other man's eyes, he added quickly, “Your wife—or this woman calling herself your wife—was not directly involved. She wasn't even present when it happened.”

“Then why are you here?”

Towne hesitated. How could he begin to explain without sounding like a lunatic? His fears for her, like his deep misgivings about this man across from him, were not the kind that could be summed up quickly or expressed in any easily intelligible way. “I'm sorry,” he said eventually, “it's very hard to explain without your wife actually being here.”

Cazaubon frowned. “Look, Dr. Towne, my wife is an intelligent woman and a free agent, but I'm not sure I can have you upsetting her with a wild story about some total stranger pretending to be her—especially at the moment.”

He stopped, as though deciding not to elaborate on those last words, but his tone implied that she might be in some particularly delicate state: unwell perhaps; burdened by some problem; or maybe simply pregnant. Whatever the reason, Cazaubon made it clear that he was prepared to defend her against any intrusion or unnecessary worry.

“I understand how all this must sound,” Sam continued lamely.

“Do you? I don't even know who you are, apart from what you tell me.”

“You can call up the university.”

Cazaubon was silent for a moment. Sam felt that he would make the call, if not immediately then later. He hoped he would.

“Look,” he said, attempting the conciliatory tone of a reasonable man, “perhaps we can clear this thing up without troubling your wife. Do you happen to have a photograph of her that I could see?”

“Of course I do. Though I'm not sure what that would prove—except maybe to show you that this woman you're talking about is obviously not my wife.”

“At least it would be a first step.”

Cazaubon started across the room toward an ornate Chinese cabinet, but stopped as he pulled open a drawer. They had both heard a sound in the hall.

As she entered, Sam felt himself pulled to his feet more by sheer nervous tension than politeness. Cazaubon had already crossed the room to kiss her lovingly on the cheek, clearly happy and relieved to see her.

“Darling,” he was saying, “this is Dr. Sam Towne of Manhattan University. He's been telling me a rather odd story…”

He stopped because Sam had gasped audibly. Both Cazaubon and the woman who had just entered turned their gaze toward the man who stood with his mouth slightly open and his pale blue eyes staring, unblinking, at her. His face was white and he looked to be on the verge of passing out.

Sam Towne had not been ready for this.

Something impossible had happened.

ONE YEAR EARLIER

1

E
leanor (Ellie) Ray was not quite sixty, though most people meeting her would have guessed her to be at least ten years older. It was an impression she cultivated; the grandmotherly touch was worth hard cash in Ellie's business.

It was difficult, looking at her now, plain and dumpy, barely five feet tall, to imagine Ellie as she once had been—the high-kicking, fishnet-stockinged, feathered and sequined glamor half of “Wanda and Ray,” a comedy and magic act that had somehow eked out a living for twenty long, hard years on the road. She had been “Wanda,” and “Ray” had been Murray Ray, her husband. She was a dancer when they met, but too short for the chorus line, and not talented enough to be a single act. She worked up a couple of novelty numbers with another girl who was over six feet, and they played a few dates in the Catskills, but their bookings quickly dwindled from a handful to none, and Ellie was thinking about getting out of the business altogether when she met Murray.

He was only a year or two older than she, but already established and a pro, though not a star. He probably never would be. He was a funny-looking little guy, not much taller than she was, but kind of sweet. They'd found themselves on the same bill a few times that season, and he'd started showing her magic tricks backstage as a way, he hoped, of getting her into bed. She knew perfectly well what he was up to, and had already made up her mind to cooperate. It was easy come, easy go in those days. Sex was as good a way as any of passing the time after the show or between jobs.

But the magic was something new, and the fascination she found in it took her by surprise. She started practicing some of the tricks he'd shown her. Murray told her she had talent. All it takes, he said, was application—and that she had. To Ellie it was a last chance to avoid waiting tables, which was probably all she'd get offered outside the business.

They'd married three months after they met, but it was another year before she joined him on the stage. It took time to work up a new act, and Murray had been right about application. It was the little tricks, the throwaway stuff, that were really grueling to master. The big illusions were surprisingly simple and largely mechanical. But that wasn't their style; for one thing they didn't have the money to buy and transport the equipment that was needed. So they did it the hard way, with timing, patter, careful misdirection, and muscular dexterity. By the time she trod the boards with Murray, Ellie's small, short-fingered hands concealed a strength that few men could equal. She could flip cards, hide chiffon scarves, and switch marked dollar bills—all with a smile on her face that never flinched, even when the pain shot up to her elbows and sometimes all the way to her shoulders. It'll get better, she told herself. Practice makes perfect. When I'm really good, it won't hurt so much.

Ellie sat back and looked down at her hands, wrinkled now and speckled with liver spots. She turned them over, curling them like claws. The strength was still there when she needed it. There was no screw-top jar or bottle that didn't yield to her iron grip. She smiled as she remembered that weight lifter who'd gotten fresh with her one time in Atlantic City, until she'd grabbed him by the balls to let him know she wasn't happy. He'd never been the same man again.

She came out of her daydream and looked up. The murmur of voices was growing. Glancing through the rectangle of glass in front of her, which from the other side was just a mirrored fragment in one of the twin starbursts on each side of the stage, she could see the auditorium was already almost full. She looked down at her watch, an ostentatiously cheap one with a plastic strap that she always wore for work; the Cartier that Murray had given her on her last birthday was kept carefully in a drawer at home. Time enough to show that off in a few months when they were out of here, enjoying the bonanza they'd been building toward these last few years.

Negotiations for the sale of the place were discreetly in hand, and looked certain to net them enough to live out their days in comfort. Ellie had never been to Europe, and dreamed of seeing Paris, Rome, and London. Annual winter cruises in the Caribbean beckoned. And of course—this was the jewel in the crown for Ellie, the fulfillment of a life's ambition—there would be a town house in central Manhattan. The girl from New Jersey would end her days as an Upper East Side matron, living in the kind of house to which her mother had taken that long subway ride to scrub and clean every day of Ellie's childhood. It was a triumph that would lay to rest some ghosts for Ellie—the only kind of ghosts that she believed in.

A thin smile played on Ellie's lips at the thought, but died almost at once. It would have been so nice, she couldn't help thinking, to have had it all thirty years ago.

But still, better now, far better now than never.

Joanna Cross found a seat toward the back and to one side. It was a vantage point from which she could see everything without being conspicuous. It was already enough that she was younger than most of the people drawn to this place and others like it. Even the staff was largely middle-aged or older, apart from some of the behind-the-scenes and maintenance people, who didn't on the whole have much contact with guests.

There was, however, one trance medium who couldn't have been more than thirty, but he was the exception. And he was talented. His séances involved a luminous tin trumpet that floated in the dark and through which spirit voices spoke. Occasionally billowing clouds of ectoplasm spewed forth from his body, taking on the forms of dead departed loved ones of the sitters, while glittering points of light skipped and shimmered over people's heads. That it was all just some gigantic conjuring trick was obvious to Joanna. The only thing that amazed her was other people's inability to see what they didn't want to see, and their willingness to believe what they wanted to believe. Or needed to.

That was what got to her. On one level it was just silly but relatively harmless. On another it was the merciless exploitation of people who had suffered loss and tragedy and who needed help. Instead they had been tagged as suckers and taken on a cynical ride that, more often than not, would leave them penniless. That was why Joanna was going to put Ellie and Murray Ray where they belonged: in jail if she could, but at the very least she meant to expose and ruin them as a warning to others of their kind.

And there was no shortage of others like them. Since she had started researching these articles for the magazine, Joanna had been amazed at the size of the psychic industry. From the corner clairvoyant and palm reader to organized compounds like this, it was a business that turned over millions, maybe billions of dollars every year—most of it in cash, with the rest largely sheltered by well-meaning but misguided legislation that allowed any fraud to pose as the founder of some church and claim charitable status. That was no doubt why the auditorium in which Joanna now sat was referred to on the plan of the Camp Star-burst compound as “The Cathedral.”

Her gaze drifted from one to the other of the glittering glass and mirror structures on the walls at each side of the stage. They were, in all their vulgar ghastliness, an obvious reflection of the “starburst” theme. And behind one of them, Joanna knew, was the place from where Ellie Ray was able to look out, as she was probably doing now, and control the proceedings.

Joanna looked down at her watch. It would be starting soon. With any luck, for sure if she had her way, it would be the last séance that would ever be held in this place.

The pattern of swimming fish and drifting sea anemones disappeared from Ellie's computer screen as she hit a key. She called up the file that she'd assembled earlier in the day when she got the list of who'd be coming. They were mostly first- or second-timers who'd heard about the place from friends. Handled right, most of them would be good for several visits, and some of them represented potentially rich pickings. These latter would be singled out for longer individual séances with key mediums in the next day or two.

Ellie scrolled the information up the screen. Everything was there, all the information she needed, ordered, concise, and detailed—and duplicated in the box files that she kept for backup. Of course, she would have to put the right names to the hundred-fifty-odd faces out there, most of them belonging to people she had only spoken to for ten or fifteen minutes at the most. But she had a mnemonic for that, a trick she'd learned from a memory act years ago.

A sound behind her made her turn. Murray came in wiping his nose with a huge white handkerchief. He'd had a chill and she'd been quite concerned about him this past week, but he'd worked through it and never missed a séance. He seemed to be picking up now, though he was still unhealthily red in the face. She absolutely had to get him on a diet soon. He was carrying far too much weight for a man of his age. All his suits had been let out to the limit, and half of them he couldn't get into at all anymore.

“Ready to rock ‚n‚ roll,” he said, stuffing the handkerchief back in his pocket. He picked up the slim battery pack by the computer and sat down with his back to Ellie. It was their usual routine. He fixed his earpiece securely in place, then sat still as she fed the threadlike filament that ran from it down the inside of his shirt collar and out through the little opening cut just below the shoulder blade. She pulled the end of it around and under his arm and plugged it into the battery pack, which he slipped into the special pocket in the lining of his jacket. She tapped the microphone in front of her, and he nodded. The connection was live.

Ellie waited a moment, checked once more through the rectangle of glass that everyone was ready, then cued Mark, their stage manager, to get the show under way.

Mark's stage-trained voice resonated impressively over the big speakers in the auditorium. “Ladies and gentlemen, the séance is about to commence. Mrs. Ellie Ray is here to welcome you with a few words of introduction.”