Mission (40 page)

That's the hard bit. Because most of us are more concerned with what happens to that hundred and ten pounds (or whatever) of walking pot roast than anything else. That's the thing we're sure of; that
we can see in the mirror, squeeze, prod, and feel we understand. Even though, as science probes ever deeper into the molecular mysteries of the body, it gets harder and harder to envisage how anything of such elegant complexity ever got put together.

The answer, of course, lies outside ourselves. Some of us stumble upon it; for others, it comes at the end of lives which resemble
Pilgrim's Progress.
A favoured few are privileged to experience
samadhi;
unification with the Ultimate Principle; the fusing of one's inner being with the transcendent Power of The Presence. But no matter how dull-witted we are, we can all experience the feeling of well-being that springs from an unselfish act of love.

For many of us, that may not be sufficient proof that God, or anything better than this world exists. That's tough. God, the Presence, or Whoever, doesn't have to prove anything. He
is.
You can either go along with that statement and maybe eventually discover the truth of it for yourselves, or you can accept the stainless steel logic of the philosophers who deny his existence.

Each of us has to find our own way home. For some, it means straying off the path and running the risk of becoming totally lost; for a minority, it is through a life behind high walls, chained to a rosary, chanting
Ave Marias
or
Nunc Dimittis.
Most of us need a push in the right direction and if anyone finds The Way through reading this then my own journey will not have been wasted.

But let's be certain where we're starting from. The original sin was ‘Brax's, not ours, and girls, you're in the clear. God never intended to deny Man the love of a good Woman; and vice versa. That's why he made us that way. Love is a two-way process. A mutual exchange. The fusion of
Chokmah
and
Binah.
It is both giving and receiving. We have to understand what it is, discover it within ourselves and start spreading it around. Love is the great healer; it is the power that can move the mountains of indifference that bar the way to The Truth. And as it shines forth from us, it awakens the dormant power in others and is reflected back. If we could switch the whole world on, we'd have ‘Brax hanging on the ropes. The one thing that really creases him is when people start being nice to each other.

Everybody needs to sweat a little, but no one should be condemned from birth to a life of grinding poverty, chronic malnutrition and social deprivation. The Man saw some bad things while he was on the road but it's got a lot worse since. Let's get one thing clear: when The Man urged us to ‘
take no thought for the morrow',
he did not mean for
us to sit on our collective ass and wring our hands until the Second Coming. The salvation of Mankind is in
our
hands. We have the power. It's inside us and all around us. All we have to do is make the connection.

Some keen students of logic may have noticed that I appear, in the foregoing, to have outlined a situation which implies we have a choice whereas earlier I reported that, according to The Man, predestination was the order of the day. Bear with me. An answer to the paradox will be forthcoming.

Thursday, 7th of May. I took a break in the late afternoon and returned to the bookshop where I had purchased the paperback reprint of the
Zohar.
I browsed along the shelves, picked out a book on the
Kabbala,
and several volumes by Rudolph Steiner then, as I rounded the end of the aisle, I ran slap into Gale McDonald.

‘Small world,' I said.

‘Yes,' she replied. ‘How long have you been interested in this stuff?'

‘Ever since someone told me it would give me power over women,' I said.

‘And has it?'

I shook my head. ‘Not yet. I'm still trying to find the right book. The guy who told me about it couldn't remember the title.'

She followed me to the check-out counter where a young bearded guy whose shoulder-length hair started on the crown of his head, manned the cash register. I glanced down at the book she was buying and saw it was an illustrated guide to Tantric Yoga. She stood aside and watched as the bearded guy checked off the prices of my six books and put them into a paper bag.

‘They look interesting,' she said.

I handed over a fifty dollar bill and held my hand open for the change. ‘Yours looks as if it might be more fun.'

‘Yes, well, I hear it's better than walking the dog,' she said. She held the street door open for me. ‘Listen, I was just on my way over to see you. Can you spare a few minutes?'

‘Is this business or pleasure?' I asked.

‘Let me buy you a cup of coffee.' She steered me across the street
and round the corner into a neat little coffee shop with a bronzed glass window.

It was crowded but, as we entered, a couple of guys got up from a table in the window. McD cut in ahead of two purple-rinsed matrons and motioned me to sit opposite her. The waitress cleared the table and took our order. McD lit another of her brown cigarettes.

I gazed idly out of the window and saw the two guys who'd been sitting at the table get into a brown VW delivery truck that was parked right outside. McD lifted her chunky leather bag on to the table, pulled out a tissue and left the bag lying at our elbows.

I established firm eye-contact and adopted a matter-of-fact tone. ‘So … how's the miracle market today?'

‘Down several points,' she said. ‘The moment I told my editor what I was on to, he told me to forget it. He didn't even bother to look at the stuff I'd typed up. It was quite amazing the way his face changed. It was just like a steel shutter coming down.'

‘Yeah, well, there you go,' I said. ‘I can understand your disappointment but I think he made the right decision. TV coverage of what happened to Mrs Perez won't do anything for people who already believe in God and it will only draw howls of derision from those who don't. Metaphysics and the media just do not mix.'

She pulled some smoke down into her lungs. ‘You could be right.'

I fished out my pack of dwarf whites and got one going. ‘So, what else is new?'

She answered me with pursed lips. ‘Oh, nothing much. I just wanted to dot a few i's. Cross a few t's.' She leaned away from the table as the waitress arrived with our coffee. ‘That was a neat snow job you laid on me the other day.'

I frowned. ‘Let me get this straight – are we talking about Mr Sheppard?'

She smiled crookedly. ‘Well, let's say we're talking about the person who occupied Room 315 at the Mayflower Hotel under that name.'

‘I see …' I blew on my coffee and took a cautious sip. ‘Does that mean you think there still may be some doubt as to his actual identity?'

She blew smoke at the plate glass window. ‘You could say that. Yes.'

I did my best to look puzzled. ‘I don't quite understand. I thought I'd explained what the situation was.'

She took off her tinted glasses. ‘Yes, you did. You were very helpful. Which is why I thought you might be able to explain something else.'

I noticed that her slate-bue eyes had turned a cold grey. ‘What's the problem?'

She burned through some more brown paper. ‘The problem is this, Mr Resnick. A friend of mine, who works for the NYPD, helped me check out your story. None of the airlines flying the Los Angeles-New York route had a lost baggage claim for a Mr Y. Sheppard, or had him listed as a passenger on that particular Monday, or over the previous weekend. The airport police at JFK have no record of finding his wallet, ID papers or passport, and Mr Y. Sheppard was not listed as a passenger on any of the afternoon or evening flights to Europe and the Middle East on Tuesday, the day you told me he flew out to Israel. Does that surprise you?'

‘Not particularly,' I said. ‘You may recall me telling you that was not his real name.'

‘That's what I'd thought you'd say,' she replied. ‘What name was he travelling under?'

I fanned my cigarette smoke from the air in between us. ‘I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to tell you that.'

‘That figures,' she said. ‘Would it come as any surprise to learn that the airport police did not carry out a search of the baggage handler's lockers?'

I spread my palms. ‘Listen, I can only tell you what he told me. What do you want me to do?'

‘Sure …' McD dumped the last quarter of her cigarette and pulled out another.

I sat back as she fired a three-inch pencil of flame at the end nearest me. ‘Do you use that to blow-torch muggers?'

‘No. But now that you mention it, I must give it a try.' Her grin had a tough edge to it. ‘This client of yours gets stranger by the minute. Why do you think he made up a story like that?'

‘Search me,' I said. I glanced out of the window. The brown VW truck hadn't moved from the curb. I checked my watch. ‘Listen, I don't want to rush you but – '

McD nodded. ‘I know. This won't take a minute. Jeff Fowler told me about those two meetings he had with you about some, uh, you know – uh, blood samples.'

‘Oh, yeah…' I said, wondering why she had deliberately stumbled over her delivery.

‘Yes,' she continued. ‘I just wanted to check over a couple of points because, well, quite frankly, both of us are a little confused.'

I considered walking out there and then but decided to sit tight and brazen it out. ‘What is it you find confusing?'

McD put her glasses back on and gave me the perplexed look of a college student seeking enlightenment from her professor. ‘Well, when Jeff analysed the blood taken from the statue, he found that it contained the same striking abnormalities that were present in an earlier sample that came from another client of yours, who apparently died a few weeks ago at his daughter's home in California. A Mr Abraham – Lucksteen?'

‘That's correct,' I replied.

McD nodded soberly. ‘Amazing … It's almost as big a coincidence as us using the same bookshop.'

I swallowed some more coffee. ‘I'm not quite sure what you're getting at.' This time, my puzzlement was genuine.

‘Your client, Mr Abraham Lucksteen,' explained McDonald. ‘He's got the same name as the
rabbi
who bar-mitzvahed you. You know – the one who lives on Fisk Street, in Brooklyn, and whose daughter lives in California. She was your classmate in junior and high school, remember?'

My coffee cup almost slipped through my fingers. ‘You've certainly been busy,' I said. The feeling of being suddenly cornered brought a note of aggression into my voice. ‘Is this what they call investigative reporting? Because from where I'm sitting, publication of any of this would be seen as “invasion of privacy”.'

Her teeth flashed, like a shark scenting blood. ‘Oh, come now, Mr Resnick. Stop stonewalling. I just want to know what is going on. I made enquiries at your office and was told that Mr Abraham Lucksteen was not on your list of clients. The
rabbi
of the same name has assured me that he is alive and well and sends you his regards.'

‘Well done,' I said through clenched teeth. ‘Anything else?'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Something happened at the Manhattan General on Easter Saturday. What is it that you and Doctor Maxwell are covering up?'

We sat back as the waitress came to refill our cups. I put my hand over mine. When she'd gone, I slid my elbows back on to the table. ‘Let me put it this way, McD. If you're off duty, it's none of your business and if you're wearing your Channel Eight hat, the answer is
“No comment”.'

She added some Sweet ‘n Low to her coffee and stirred it in with a patient sigh. ‘Look, you're a busy man, so I won't waste your time. When Jeff Fowler took a look at the blood samples on those slides that your Doctor Maxwell gave him, he found it was still fresh, and it stayed that way.'

I pulled out another cigarette. ‘He didn't tell me that.'

‘No,' said McD. ‘But then, you weren't exactly forthcoming with him. The point is, since the samples didn't come deep frozen, they could not have been sent from the Philippines. When you told him that story, he already knew where they'd come from.'

‘Oh? Where was that?'

McDonald paused for effect then let me have it right between the eyes. ‘From an unidentified Hispanic male who was tagged DOA when he was delivered to the Manhattan General at nine p.m. on Easter Saturday.'

All of which, as you can imagine, was familiar stuff. But in the wrong hands, it could be dynamite. I sipped the last of my coffee and feigned a studied disinterest.

McD dragged down more smoke. ‘Before Jeff came to see you, he went over to the hospital to have a word with Doctor Maxwell. She wasn't there but he ran into an intern called Paul Lazzarotti who was using her office to proposition a nurse. I won't bore you with the details of their conversation but Jeff asked Lazzarotti if, as her assistant, he knew anything about the slides. Lazzarotti mentioned he'd seen Doctor Maxwell with them in her hand on the Saturday when you came up from the morgue. That led to the dead Hispanic, and the discovery that drawer eleven was empty and back to Doctor Maxwell's office where Jeff, by sheer chance, happened to see a white coat hanging up in a half-open locker. It was one Doctor Maxwell had been wearing which should have gone in the laundry basket but hadn't. And it had bloodstains on it.' McDonald shrugged.

‘So Jeff took it away for analysis,' I concluded.

‘Yup,' said McDonald. ‘And there was some blood on it that matched the samples on the slides. So when Doctor Maxwell went along with your story about faith-healing in the Philippines, Jeff knew that she was in on the cover up too.'