Memoirs Of An Invisible Man (63 page)

In the middle of April I would have to give a large part of the money I had amassed to the federal government and the State and City of New York, but I would still be left with almost eight hundred thousand dollars — far more than I needed to establish a safe existence for Jonathan Crosby, and I set Bernie to work on the next step.

“Bernie, I’ve decided I’d like to own my own home.”

“That’s very smart. There are a lot of tax advantages to ownership, and you’re throwing away way too much money in taxes. By the way, I have a deal on my desk—”

“Bernie, do you have someone in your office who could go around with the brokers and see what’s available? I’m kind of busy just now. When you’ve got it narrowed down, I’ll arrange to look at the choices myself.”

“Sure, and I also have a very good real estate broker — in fact I’d like to get you together with him sometime. You know there can be tremendous profits in buying up single-room-occupancy hotels. There’s a lot of unrealized value in these situations, and it’s not as big a deal as people think clearing out the—”

“That’s great, Bernie. Let me tell you exactly what I’m looking for. There are some things that might not be important to someone else…”

I had Bernie and then his broker describe all sorts of properties to me over the telephone, and although I was never able to get inside any of them, I went and looked at several buildings from the outside and peered in the windows. In the second week of April we signed a contract on a brownstone on East Ninety-second Street, and at the end of June we closed. Bernie produced a lawyer, and the two of them handled the entire transaction, including the financing, with a power of attorney. One of Bernie’s great virtues is that he is not pedantic about notarizing signatures.

The top three floors of my building were broken up into apartments occupied by rent-stabilized tenants, leaving me with a large apartment consisting of all of the first two floors, a small basement, and an entirely useless garden. I was not at all happy about becoming a landlord, but it was out of the question for me to live by myself in an apartment building, where the front door, and probably the apartment door as well, would always be visible to someone. And furthermore, since I could not safely use elevators, there would be stairs to climb, and the stairways would have doors that would probably also be in public view. And doormen always know when you come and go. I could not so much as have the groceries delivered without them knowing that I was there, but they would also know they had not seen me come in. Within a matter of days they would realize that something was terribly strange.

In my own brownstone, on the other hand, I could come and go as I pleased and have whatever I wanted delivered without anyone knowing anything. Outside there was a broad stone stair leading from the pavement up to a door on the old parlor floor, which still served as the building entrance for my apartment as well as for those on the upper floors. However, underneath the stair and out of sight of the street was another door, which the former owner seemed to have used only for taking out the garbage, and I made this the main entrance to my apartment. From the sidewalk I would step over a little waist-high metal railing and then down two steps into a recess under the stair, where I would be entirely out of sight. In the beginning I kept a key hidden there so that I could unlock the door and slip through unseen by anyone in the street.

Although the apartment had been completely redone just two years before and was in perfectly good condition, I had Bernie hire a contractor to redesign it for my special needs, and each evening I would let myself in and inspect the work, so that I could phone in my instructions the next morning. To start with I had the front door reversed so that it opened on the side furthest under the stair and out of sight. Then, upstairs in the front room, I had them cut through the wall behind the mailboxes, which were in a small entrance hall at the top of the outside stair, so that I could remove my mail from inside my living room. I had special blinds installed and heavy curtains, and I put in a complete alarm system and grates on all the windows. Of course I knew that if Jenkins ever found this place, nothing I could do would keep him out, but I could eliminate the risk of some random burglar or vandal making an extraordinary discovery. I had them redo the largest bedroom as a workroom completely outfitted with woodworking and metalworking tools and a full set of locksmith’s equipment.

I had already spent many days in a locksmith’s shop, watching the work and reading books and equipment catalogues, and I now set about practicing what I had until now only been able to observe. As soon as the work was finished in my apartment I inserted new cylinders in the locks with tumblers that would open with the invisible keys to my old apartment and office. This was such a convenience that I mailed two cylinders to Alice and installed them in her locks as well.

For some reason this made her uneasy. She wondered why I had keys at all and where I had gotten cylinders for them suddenly. Perhaps it all seemed too practical for a ghost. But then lately Alice often seemed uneasy.

“What are you doing these days, Nick?”

“Same as always. Trying to buy cheap and sell dear. What makes you ask?”

“Nothing. You seem preoccupied lately. As if you were thinking about something else.”

“Alice, I find it difficult almost to the point of impossibility to think about anything else but you.”

“Oh yes? Well, I’m sure you’ll give it your best and manage somehow. But I’d like to ask you something.”

“Anything.”

“If you should have to leave for some reason, would you do me a favor and let me know first?”

Why was she asking this?

“Solemn promise,” I said. “But you know I wouldn’t leave… unless it was absolutely necessary.”

Very likely it already was absolutely necessary. Every day I stayed increased the risk. Sooner or later something would happen to give me away. Alice’s friends asked all the time about her fiancé. And her neighbors knew someone was actually living with her in the apartment. Did they ever wonder why they never saw him? Still, I could put off leaving a little longer. Until I had my new life completely set up. I would, I reflected cheerlessly, have the rest of my life to live alone.

I spent most of the summer furnishing the apartment. I got credit cards and opened accounts at department stores and had everything delivered: furniture, kitchen appliances, cooking utensils, silver, books, records. It was a wonderfully pleasant home I was setting up, and really I would have enjoyed doing it all with Alice. But, of course, the whole point was that I must not do it with anyone. At last I had a telephone under the name of Jonathan Crosby, and I could now have all my mail sent to me at the apartment. Each day I would go and collect it and sit at the desk in my new study and conduct my business. I even provisioned the kitchen with all the staples. I could at any moment have begun to live there on my own.

But each night I would go back to Alice’s apartment.

A
lice, would you do me a favor? There’s a shop in midtown that has a clown suit to which I’ve taken an irresistible fancy. I want you to buy it for me. For some reason they won’t take telephone orders. I’ve picked out a mask to go with it and some handsome puffy white gloves.”

“Why? Do you have a date? The Invisible Man bandaging suits you better, you know.”

“I thought you didn’t like it. And I don’t have a date. Just an errand to run. I’d like you to rent me a station wagon for twenty-four hours as well.”

“You’re awfully mysterious lately.”

“That’s just a ghost’s job.”

“Is it? I’m glad you tell me that, because I’ve been wondering what a ghost’s job is, and this is really the first information I’ve been able to get.”

On a Thursday afternoon in early August I drove the rented station wagon down to Basking Ridge. My clown suit was of professional quality, although it would have looked better with real make-up instead of a mask. But make-up does not adhere very well to my skin, and anyway I had to be able to shed the disguise and flee if something went wrong.

And there were all sorts of things that could go wrong, I reflected uneasily: the car could break down, the police could stop me, someone could drive in to clean the gutters just as I was loading up the car. But I did not need extraordinarily good luck for everything to work: I just needed not to have extraordinarily bad luck.

People were extravagantly friendly the entire way. Whenever I passed a car with children in it, I would wave inanely and blow kisses, and everyone would wave back. When I got to Richard and Emily’s house, I turned into the drive and drove straight up to the door of the icehouse. I had called several times during the last few days, most recently ten minutes before from a gas station, to make sure no one was there. I was out of the car, into the icehouse, and back again with all my invisible possessions in under fifteen minutes. I crawled around on the sawdust floor for several more minutes to be sure I hadn’t dropped anything, and then I was in the car again, heading out the drive and back to New York.

Then, a few miles from Basking Ridge, everything began to come apart. A state trooper pulled up behind me, the light on the roof of his car spinning and his siren emitting little warning blasts. I pulled over onto the shoulder, trying to decide whether I should be frantically tearing off my costume or whether I should wait for a better opportunity. But if I fled now, I would certainly lose all my invisible things for ever. Better to see if I could somehow salvage the situation. I had barely brought the car to a halt before the trooper was standing there staring in at me through the open car window.

“Sorry to wave you over like that. I was just wondering what it would cost to have you work my daughter’s birthday party…”

I took his number and promised to call.

When I got to New York it was already dusk. I parked the car several blocks from my house, on the park side of Fifth Avenue, where I could grind the windows of the station wagon up and down without being noticed. I slid over to the passenger side, squeezed myself as far down onto the floor under the dashboard as I could get, and pulled off the clown suit, stuffing it under the seat for Alice to retrieve later. Invisible again, I climbed out the open window by the passenger seat and set about unloading my invisible possessions through the tailgate window and carrying them, one load at a time, back to my brownstone.

I
had already begun practicing with the equipment in my workshop, using visible materials. I was an indifferent craftsman with wood and had never so much as drilled a hole in a piece of metal in my life, and even with the motivation I now had, my work was still primitive and unpredictable. Furthermore, because I could not see exactly where my hands were, I was constantly slicing and scraping my fingers on saw blades and files and chisels, and no matter how careful I was I found it impossible to avoid wood splinters and metal shavings. When I began working with invisible materials, these problems became even worse, and I had to stop regularly to examine my hands, for fear I was bleeding.

I tried to compensate for my lack of skill and the difficulty of the materials by doing everything extremely slowly and carefully, but I could see that it would take years of practice before I would be able to fabricate some of the things I would want, and I had to be careful to conserve my limited supply of raw materials until I knew exactly what I would most need and had the skills to produce it. Above all, it was essential that I not make mistakes. I executed each project with visible wood or metal first so that I could see exactly what I was doing and what might go wrong.

To start with, I manufactured an extremely light, collapsible ladder that could be easily carried around when I wanted to go somewhere I wasn’t meant to. It was usually more than enough to get me up to a first floor window or even a fire escape. Then I fabricated a set of simple lock-picking tools and went about experimenting with them until I was quite proficient at opening locked doors and filing cabinets.

I had several invisible telephones, and after many days of research I was able to determine their brand and model and obtain a visible duplicate. I disassembled the visible and the invisible sets in tandem, putting each piece in a labeled envelope for future projects. With part of one of the receivers and some of the electrical wire I had salvaged, I set up a supplementary alarm system. It was far less elaborate than the commercial one, but then you could not see it, so that no one would ever disable it. I knew that the commercial alarm system would not mean anything at all to Jenkins: he would go right through it without leaving a trace. But no matter how carefully Jenkins entered the apartment, there were certain things I knew he would have to touch. Such as the pages of this manuscript, neatly stacked on a table in my study. He would see the first words, “If only you could see me now…,” and understand at once that it contained everything he wanted to know. He would have to look at it, and once he did, he would trigger my alarm system, and I would know he had been there. In the frame of the entrance door was an old doorbell that had been painted over many years ago. I cleaned it out and wired my alarm into it. Each time I arrived at the door, I would press the bell, and there would be a single, just audible click, which told me that nothing had been disturbed. One day, I might push the button and not hear the click, and I would know that Jenkins had been there. I would turn away from the door and never return again.

Not that I thought Jenkins would find this apartment. I had worked it all out so carefully, and I could not see what could ever lead him here. Furthermore, I had not given up on my plan to counterattack again, and toward the end of August I decided that I was ready to attempt another trip to Washington.

This time I had the advantage of all my new, invisible equipment, and, even more important, I had Alice with me, which meant that I had a hotel room to retreat to whenever I needed to eat or sleep. Alice had a number of acerbic things to say about the idea of visiting Washington in August and about my failure to explain the purpose of the trip, but she seemed, actually, almost enthusiastic about it, and once we were there, she spent her days cheerfully in the National Gallery and the Corcoran.