Ghost Music (36 page)

Next I surfed the net for any mention of Worldwide Surgical Solutions, Inc. It turned out that they were a high-tech medical research company based in Philadelphia that had gone bankrupt early in 1999. Their business plan had been to set up a worldwide database for organ donors, and at the same time to develop new ways of harvesting donor organs more quickly and transporting them more efficiently. If a patient in San Francisco suffered from
catastrophic renal failure, he could be supplied within hours with a replacement kidney that came from as far away as Addis Ababa or Rio de Janeiro or Vladivostok.

But here was the crunch: Worldwide Surgical Solutions had gone bust after accusations had been made that several of their donors had been slightly less than dead when their hearts and their livers were taken out.

There was surprisingly little background information about it. One French newspaper had suggested that government ministers in at least three African countries had accepted substantial kickbacks in return for supplying organ donors. In one case, in Ethiopia, it was claimed that an entire village had been massacred to supply livers and lungs for private patients in the U.S. But it seemed obvious that the story had been heavily censored.

I switched off my laptop and walked to the window. I could see my own reflection suspended out there, like a ghost.

Everything was clicking into place. Axel Westerlund and Enrico Cesaretti and David Philips had all attended the same conference to set up an international transplant business. All three of them were wealthy men, with exceptionally fine apartments and very comfortable lifestyles. All three of them had had their children kidnapped and tortured, and all three of them had been killed in the grisliest way that anybody could imagine.

Victor Solway had arranged for their killings, and Victor Solway had taken everything away from them: their families, their apartments, their money, their very existence.

“You make sure you do a hundred times worse to them as they ever did to you.”

I didn't yet have the final piece of evidence—the reason why Victor had taken so devastating a revenge on them. But the only connection between them that I had been able to find was Worldwide Surgical Solutions, Inc.; and the only connection that I had been able to find between Victor and the medical profession was Michael, his baby son.

What had Kate said about Victor?
He was angry with God. Angry with the doctors. Just angry.

* * *

Shortly after 10:00
PM
there was a hesitant rapping at my door. I opened it, and there was Pearl, in her old pink bathrobe. It looked as if she had tried to pin up her hair, but it was even more chaotic than usual.

“I do live here, don't I?” she asked me.

“Yes, Pearl, you do. Do you want me to take you back to your apartment?”

She peered at me closely. “You're that Gideon Lake, aren't you? I remember you. I shall always remember you. You're a good man.
Resonant.
”

“That's right, Pearl. Hold on. Just let me get my keys.”

I closed the door behind me and took hold of her elbow. I guided her to the bottom of the stairs, but she had only taken two steps up before she turned and said, “You're worried, aren't you? I can tell.”

“I have a couple of things on my mind, Pearl, yes.”

“No . . . you can't fool me, Gideon Lake. You're
very
worried. Come upstairs, I have something to show you. I think the time has come.”

“Okay, Pearl. Whatever you say.”

We climbed the stairs. She had left her apartment door open, and I followed her inside. It smelled even more strongly of oil paints than it had before. The artist in the pale gray smock had obviously been here, adding some more touches to his figure study.

“Would you like a drink?” Pearl asked me. “I think I have some whiskey someplace, I think. Or is it rum? There was this black fellow, he was always bringing me rum. He used to sing Paul Robeson songs to me, in the bath. ‘Old Man River.'”

“No—I don't need a drink, thanks. What do you want me to see?”

“My painting, of course! It's almost done.”

I circled around the easel so that I could take a look at it. I was prepared for some changes, but when I actually saw it, I felt a crawling sensation all the way down my back. There was Pearl, as before, naked and insouciant, smoking her cigarette, and there were the Westerlunds, and the Philipses, and the baby boy that Kate had been pushing in the park. But now the Cesarettis had joined them, with Enrico and Salvina standing at the very back, and their three children standing next to the ottoman, on the right-hand side.

The painting was nearly finished, because everybody's face was now rendered in perfect detail. Nobody was smiling, however. They all looked desperate, as if they were trapped inside this picture, and would never be able to escape.

I stared at the canvas for a long time, and then I turned to Pearl and said, “What?”

Pearl was lighting a cigarette. She blew out a long stream of smoke, and then she said, “Don't tell me you
still
don't get it? You know who murdered all of these people, don't you, Gideon? You and you alone. But if only
one
living person knows who did it, that's enough.”

I looked back at the painting. “I still don't understand. I know who murdered them all, yes. But what am I supposed to do about it? I can't go to the police because I don't have any evidence. Besides, they're holding my friend Margot, and if I go the police, they say that they'll hurt her, or worse.”

Pearl said, very gently, “I can see these people, too, Gideon. I used to be a singer, when I was young. I have resonance, too. I doubt if I can see them as clearly as you do, but I
can
see them, coming and going, opening doors and closing them again.”

She paused, and smoked. “The problem is that once they've passed over, the dead can't accuse the living of any crime or
misdemeanor, even if it's torture or murder. The dead can't name the people who killed them. Heaven is not a place for people to seek revenge. Heaven is a place for forgiveness—for new beginnings.”

“I'm sorry, Pearl. I don't actually believe in heaven.”

Pearl shrugged. “That doesn't matter. You can call it whatever you like. But it's the world beyond, where all of us go when we die.”

“You say that dead people can't name their killers?”

“If they could, think how many living people would be wrongly accused, by dead people who were bitter and resentful. Death is a time to move on, no matter what happened in your previous life. Death is not just the end . . . it's a brand-new beginning.”

“But all of these dead people, I
saw
them. I talked to them, I touched them.”

Pearl smiled, and nodded “That's because you're so
receptive
. When you stand close to them, they reappear, they take on flesh, and substance, just like they did when they were alive. You can feel them, you can kiss them, and while you're close to them, other people can see them, too. It's a very great gift.”

“But I saw what happened to them,” I told her. “I saw how they were tortured, and how they were killed.”

“Of course. Because they wanted you to know how they died, and who murdered them. Like I say, they can't make any accusations. They're dead. But they did the next best thing, and they
showed
you. Those horrible things you witnessed, they're always there, waiting for anybody who has the sensitivity to pick them up. It's no different than listening to an Elvis record. He's dead, but we can still hear him singing. Or watching a Buster Keaton movie. He's dead, too, but he can still make us laugh.”

“What about this baby? This is Kate's baby, right? The baby she had with Victor?”

“Little Michael, that's right. Michael-Row-The-Boat-Ashore.”

“How did he die? Do you know that?”

Pearl laid a hand on her left breast. “It was his heart. I can't
remember exactly what they call it, but it's something to do with the blood pumping all the wrong way.”

“Did he have a heart transplant? Is that it?”

Pearl nodded. “Kate was against it, for some reason. I remember that. There was a lot of shouting. A lot of crying. A lot of slamming doors.”

“But Michael did have the transplant?”

Pearl blew out smoke. “Columbia University Hospital. The very best. But he died, anyhow.”

“And Victor?”

“Hmmh,” she said, almost in amusement. “I never saw a man in such a rage. It was the rage from hell.”

I said, “You knew all about this, right from the beginning, didn't you? You're not half as bananas as you pretend to be, if you'll forgive my saying so.”

“You had to find out for yourself, my dear. You couldn't be told.”

“You knew what Kate was doing, didn't you? You knew that she was going to fly me to Stockholm and London and Venice, to see these people? And not only that—you knew
why
.”

“I did try to warn you, my dear. I didn't let you go into it with your eyes closed. What did I say to you? She's only using you, for her own purposes. She's only using you to do something that
she
can't do. But what did you say? It's only about pleasure, you said. It's only about affection, and friendship. But it was always much more than that. And now it's time for you to do what she wanted you to do, and you have no choice, not if you're going to save your Margot. In her own way, your Kate is holding her hostage just as much as Victor.”

“I don't get this,” I protested. “I really don't get this.”

Pearl came up to me and gently touched my cheek, as if I were a child, and she were my mother. “You don't have any choice, my dear. She's painted you into a corner.”

“But what am I supposed to do now?”

She went across to the bureau, which was crowded with ashtrays and pots of moisturizer and paintbrushes and books, and brought back a photograph in a tarnished silver frame. “Here,” she said. “This will point you in the right direction.”

It was a faded color picture of a family—a father, with glasses, and a suit with flappy lapels—a mother, in a flowery-printed frock—and a young girl in a T-shirt with braces in her teeth. They were standing in front of a handsome colonial house, with cherry trees in blossom all around it.

“That's Kate,” I said. “This must have been taken at her parents' house, in Connecticut. She must be about fourteen years old.”

Pearl nodded. “She gave me this photograph, to show to you, when the time came.”

“So what are you trying to tell me—that she's gone back to stay at her parents' house?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Her parents are dead. That's what she told me, anyhow.”

“What difference does that make?”

“For Christ's sake, Pearl! Now you're talking in riddles, just like she always does!”

Pearl said, “No, Gideon. Not riddles.
Clues.
Anybody who gives you a straight answer, they're not telling you the truth—or not the whole truth, anyhow. But people who give you clues . . . they're allowing you to make up your own mind, wouldn't you say?”

I turned over the photograph frame and looked at the back. Somebody had written on it,
Old Post House, Brinsmade Lane, Sherman, May '92
.

“You're telling me that I should go there?” I said.

“Up to you,” she replied, looking the other way.

Shit.
I really didn't know what to do. For all I knew, Pearl was completely senile, and she was telling me nothing but gibberish. Yet here on the canvas was the evidence that what she was
saying must make some kind of sense. The Westerlunds, and the Philipses, and the Cesarettis—all of them staring at me as if they were pleading with me to help them.

“Tell me about Kate,” I asked Pearl.

“What's to tell? You know her much better than I ever will.”

She was right, of course, and that was just the answer I was afraid of. But if I could hold her, and feel her—if we could be lovers, what difference did it make?

“There's one thing,” I said. “Two days ago, Kate said that there were only three days left, but she wouldn't tell me what she meant.”

Pearl pulled a face. “I guess she meant that time was running out. I mean, time does has an exasperating habit of doing that, doesn't it? It runs and it runs and you can turn that hourglass over as many times as you like, it just keeps on running.”

* * *

I took a taxi to Starlite Records and interrupted my friend Henry Brickman in the middle of an A&R meeting with a country-rock band who looked like the crows from
Dumbo
.

“I need to borrow your car, man. I wouldn't ask but it's seriously urgent.”

He blinked at me unhappily through his blue-tinted glasses. “It's new, Gideon. I only got it last week.”

“I'll treat it like my own, I promise.”

“That's what I'm worried about. I remember that GTO you used to drive around in. It was one big dent.”

All the same, he gave me the keys, and I drove his brand-new metallic gray Malibu out of the parking structure and up Park Avenue. The sky was the same metallic gray and it was starting to snow again, and I wasn't at all sure that it was either wise or practical for me to drive all the way to Sherman, but I simply couldn't think what else I could do.

If Pearl was right, and Kate had been giving me clues instead of riddles, maybe that photograph of her with her parents was the answer to everything I needed to know.

I switched on the radio, right in the middle of a commercial break. Almost unbelievably, they were playing the music for Mother Kretchmer's Frozen Scrapple, which I had adapted as the melody for “The Pointing Tree.” It was a truly weird coincidence, but in a way it reassured me that I had made the right decision.