Life to Life: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (7 page)

I hoofed it across from the hotel to the
towers via several different escalators and stairways—it's no small
distance and the plaza is multilevel—then straight up like an arrow
via express elevator to a point beyond sanity along the San Andreas
fault. I like to think of myself as a sophisticated modern but I
still believe that any structure above a hundred feet in earthquake
country is the height of folly and no pun intended. So I wanted to
make this visit quick and clean but that was not in the cards.

I went in past bubbling
fountains and Corinthian leathers and hopeful starlets masquerading
as receptionists to find Francois buried in a turret of video-phone
monitors and in conference with the financial centers of Europe. He
waved me to a chair and went on uninterrupted with dialogues in
several languages but none in English. I had been there before. I
went on back to the bar and helped myself to a drink then took a
chair at the windows overlooking Century Park East which was much
too far below. Heights have never bothered me except in California
where it is particularly unnerving to be seated at a wall of glass
hundreds of feet above a very unsteady earth. But there was no
place else to sit so I repositioned the chair with my back to all
that and tried to relax with bourbon while Francois bought and sold
Europe.

I was building my second
relaxer when Francois joined me at the bar. He poured a thimble of
Cognac into a snifter, sampled it with his nose, then told me
without further preamble, "Our Annie is in trouble."

I said, "No!" very sarcastically, I'm
afraid.

"But yes. Even now she is
with the police. I have send my best lawyers to guarantee her
rights but this yet could be not enough. Do you have influence at
the police?"

I replied, "None I've ever noticed. Has she
been arrested?"

He gave me an exasperated look and said,
"Arrested or not arrested makes no difference. Merely the hint of
wrongdoing is enough to ruin her. Can you stop this?"

I said, "I don't know what
to stop or where, Francois. Settle down and tell me what's going
on."

He belted the Cognac without removing his
gaze from mine. "Going is this Lieutenant Stewart at the Gestapo.
He orders that she present herself for questioning. So I have send
my best lawyers with her to make sure she is not violated. But
still I worry."

"Questioning about what?"

He shrugged. "What is the
difference? To be questioned is to presume guilt, is it not? There
must be no hint—"

I growled, "Cut the shit,
Francois. What is Stewart talking to her about?"

His gaze fell away as he
replied, "He is suspicious about the deaths."

I said, "Well hooray, so
are a lot of people. But does Stewart
have
anything?"

"This I do not know."

"Look at me,
dammit.
Could
he
have anything?"

He looked at me but then the eyes flicked
away again as he said, "What does it matter? I wish it saved,
Ashton."

I said, "Go straight to
hell, Francois. I don't work that way and you know it."

He knew it, yeah, and I
guess that was the only reason he tolerated me. I wouldn't kiss his
ass but he knew I wouldn't kiss any others, either. I think he
respected that. But a tic began working at his left eye as he
quietly told me, "The investment is in millions already. It is
secured for her the satellite channels for worldwide broadcast,
interpreters in a hundred tongues, a ministry of the entire world
and all will love her. You must help us realize this,
Ashton."

I honestly could not have
said at that moment whether the guy was asking me to help him con
the world or to save it. So I put it directly to him. "What are
your projected first- year profits?"

He smiled, lit a cigarette, went to the
window, turned back to me with a sparkle in the eyes. "I will have
the profits, yes, but Annie will have the dream."

"What dream is that?"

The sparkle turned to a
snap as he said, "What is this inquisition, Ashton? And what is
this absurd naiveté? Tell me what has moved this world into the
modern age, my friend. Is it altruism or personal
incentive?—nationalism or commerce? Has the religion made your
America the greatest power of all times?"

I was beginning to suspect that the guy had
been conning me all these years or else he'd taken a crash language
course since our last meeting. I was suddenly understanding every
word he said. I told him, "A strong dollar has helped."

"But of course. It has helped also the
religion in America. Has it not?"

I said, "The comic, Lenny
Bruce, had a line I always liked. He said to show him a preacher
with two suits of clothes while another man had no clothes at all
and he'd show you a con man."

Francois chuckled and extinguished his
cigarette. "Did Lenny Bruce perform for free?"

"Not if he could help it, I guess," I
conceded.

"So did not he too profit from religion? Do
the police not profit from crime? And does the priest not profit
from sin?"

He had a point there. I just was not sure
how it applied but I conceded it. "You have a point there."

"Ah yes. So how does it
matter what drives the engine if all the passengers arrive at their
destination, eh?"

I told him, "A countryman of yours had
something to say about that. Guy name La Rochefoucald. Heard of
him?"

"To be sure. A namesake.
He too was a Francois."

I said, "Yeah. More of a moralist than you,
though. He wrote three hundred years ago that no action, no matter
how brilliant, is to be considered great unless it is the result of
a great motive."

My Francois shrugged and
replied with only a trace of accent, "You speak of greatness while
I speak of life at the surface of the planet. The masses do not
feed on greatness, Ashton, and even the priests have known this
from the beginning. This is why they feed the masses chants and
rituals while confining the holy mysteries within locked vaults. So
do not moralize with me on the virtues of virtue itself. And do not
ask me to engage your virtue. I engage your talent, Ashton. Only
that has accuracy in this world of commerce. Do not be
confused."

I was not at all confused.
Not at the moment, anyway. I told Francois, "Okay, maybe I'll sell
you some talent—but you'll have to take my idea of virtue in the
package—and also on one very large condition."

"What is the condition?" he asked with a
smile.

"That you don't lay the
phony accent on me ever again."

He went right on smiling and replied, "Very
well, but you must honor the secret. It is, after all, often a
valuable advantage this ability to dissimulate."

I knew that, yes. And I
had to wonder if that ability to dissimulate extended beyond
language into more subtle nuances of human intercourse. The guy had
a lot more depth than any he'd shown me in times gone
by.

Frankly, I was intrigued
by this new Francois. But that is not why I changed my mind about
disengagement.

I changed my mind because Annie joined us
near the end of that conversation and she was obviously in deep
difficulty.

Well, she sort of joined
us but only I knew that. I saw her reflection in the window glass
behind Francois while he was expounding on greatness and the needs
of the masses. I say reflection even though she could not have been
standing outside, and yet that could not accurately describe what
I saw because a window glass cannot reflect that which is not
physically present, can it?

However and wherever, I
saw Annie and I knew that she was in high distress. She was asking
for help. Not from Francois but from me. I could hardly disengage
at that point.

So I advised Francois to
stick close to the telephone and I made a quick departure. I called
Stewart from the Maserati and he confirmed that the lady had a
problem.

"We are getting ready to book her," he told
me. "The charge is murder one. Three times."

I don't know why it shocked me so. I
croaked, "Three counts?"

"Right," the cop replied.
"And that is just the beginning." It was just the beginning for me
too. I should have disengaged right there.

Chapter Nine: A View with Prejudice

Apparently Paul Stewart
had found a direction for his anger over David Carver's death. By
the time I got downtown Annie had already been hustled off to Sybil
Brand, the local lockup for women, and her lawyers were scratching
at judicial doors for her quick release pending a formal
hearing.

Stewart had the easy,
relaxed look of a man who knows he's right but there were flaws in
that self-satisfaction, small tremors of doubt here and there that
were evidenced by the body language as he outlined the case to me.
I was a bit surprised to discover that the deaths charged against
Annie were not the latest three in the series close to her but the
deaths of three of her husbands. And though it was comforting to
learn that all of the evidence in the case was purely
circumstantial, it was a bit distressing to see that an imaginative
prosecutor could weave it all together in a damning
indictment.

"That woman is a black
widow," Stewart said confidently. “And a very clever one, at that.
The insurance companies paid off on each one without a murmur but
it was the last one that undid her—the last insurance company, I
mean. They paid, sure, but one of their investigators began having
second thoughts several months ago, after learning about the first
two. I turned the guy over to Carver—we get a lot of that. By and
large any insurance company hates like hell to pay off on any
policy, so they'll go after any little hook they can find to get
out of it. So we get a lot of private investigators crawling
through here and you can't take them all seriously. I palmed the
guy off on Carver. I think our black widow intrigued him, really
got into his belly. The more he looked at her the more he began to
see the outlines of the red hourglass on her underside. He came in
here two or three times a week every week for the past two months
wanting to bring charges but hell...”

"You weren't buying it."

"Nothing to buy," Stewart said, with a
giveaway twitch of the lip. He massaged the back of his hand and
went on. "But he kept digging. And he found a sympathetic ear at
the D.A.'s office. The Milhaul thing was the log that broke the
jam. Just yesterday the D. A. decided to take the thing to the
grand jury. David did not live to see that development." His eyes
fell, then came back hard and demanding on mine. "But now I want
you to tell me something—and I don't want a lot of hedging and
double-talking when you tell me. Is there a way to project psychic
power? And could that woman be doing something like that?"

I said, "You're thinking of Carver's
death."

"Bet your ass I am," he shot back.

"Your answer is yes," I said, sighing. "But
you'd never prove it in a court of law."

"Has it ever been scientifically validated?
I mean, under carefully controlled laboratory conditions?"

"Yes, it has," I replied,
"but not everyone in the scientific community believes it. It's a
very difficult thing to nail down conclusively. So there's always
an angle of attack for those who feel compelled to attack such
things. Your problem, I think, would be to conclusively prove that
Annie has that kind of power."

"That's where you're
wrong," he said. "The woman
claims
that kind of power. We can fix her on her own
petard if I can get twelve men and women to buy a reasonable
presumption that it
is
possible, that Ann Farrel
has
it, and that by God she's been using
it."

I muttered, "Shades of Salem."

He said, "Come on. I—"

I said, "You come on. Do you actually have
someone at the D.A.'s office who's willing to take on—"

"No I haven't," the cop
said angrily. "But she did it to her husbands the old-fashioned
way. We'll prove it, and that establishes her character. She is
willing to kill. Okay. I want a by-God presumption working in our
favor to say that she's found a neater way to kill, a safer way,
and that she has killed at least four more times that way. I'll get
it, too."

I said, "Well, for what
it's worth, I think you could be right. Not that you
are
, especially, but
that you could be. Your problem will be to find respectable expert
witnesses to back you up in court."

"You think that might be a problem?"

I told him, "I know it will be a
problem."

He studied my face for a moment, then asked,
"What about you?"

"I said
respectable,
" I replied.
"I have no credentials to present to a court. I really feel
obligated to advise you against this. How many times can she swing?
If you've already got—"

"I'll keep in touch," he said sullenly,
ending the debate. "You do that too. And let me know if something
develops for you."

I said, "I need to tell you that I have been
asked to enter the case in her defense."

Stewart snapped me a hard look. "Who
asked?"

I told him, "She did."

"Going to do it?'

I said, "I'm already in it
to my ears. Guess I'll stick around to see how it falls. You can
cancel my voucher. I didn't turn anything for you. But I will keep
in touch."