Mission (41 page)

‘I see,' I said. It was the best I could manage. Obviously Fowler was much less of an idiot than I thought. As for McDonald, it was clear
she possessed the nose of a bloodhound plus the speed and tenacity of a ferret.

McD paused to drink her coffee. Doubtless to leave me, in the style of John Ehrlichmann, dangling slowly in the wind. I knew she was baiting the trap but I could not resist walking into it with my mouth wide open. ‘Is there any more?'

‘Oh, yes,' she replied. ‘This is where it really gets interesting. Lazzarotti's description of the Hispanic gentleman who went missing from drawer eleven is almost identical with Mrs Perez's description of the man she met in Central Park, and your secretary's description of Mr Sheppard. When you put all that together with the statue, Fowler's analysis of the blood, and what that implies about Mr Sheppard's physiology – '

‘Oh, yeah, what does it imply?' I said sharply.

She looked about her then lowered her voice. ‘Listen. We both know that nearly everything you told me about this guy has either been a bare-faced lie or an evasion of the truth. Who is he – and where does he come from? Is he, uh – ' she hesitated, ‘ – part of a
Close Encounter-type
situation?'

I laughed. So near and yet so far. ‘Fowler's already asked me that. Come on, McD. You know damn well if that was true I'd be beating a path to your door. Jeff Fowler's given you a bum steer. I don't know anything about what happened to the guy who was in drawer eleven but I can assure you of one thing – he is not Mr Sheppard. I'm sorry. I'd like to help you but I have nothing to add to what I've already said.'

She formed a loose circle with her mouth and let the smoke drift out slowly, taking it back in through her nose. It had been years since I'd seen anyone do that. ‘Are the other partners in your law firm involved in this cover up?'

The smile froze on my face. ‘You're starting to tread on my toes, McD. Let me give you some sound advice. Stop wasting your time and mine. There is no cover up. This is not another Watergate. And you are not Carl Bernstein or Bob Woodward. There
is
no story. So just drop it, okay?'

Which has to be the most provocative thing you can say to a pushy reporter. I don't know what got into me.

Her expression didn't change. ‘Are you sure you don't want to say anything?'

I led with my bottom lip. ‘Listen. You know as much as I do.'

‘You mean, like the fact that the amazing Mr Sheppard is not in Israel but in your apartment on 75th Street?' She put the question to me as if she didn't quite understand it herself.

I sat there with egg on my face. ‘You've spoken to him?'

‘No,' said McD. ‘Mr Sheppard appears unwilling to answer the door-buzzer or telephone, but the janitor was very helpful.'

You may remember me telling you he was nosey. He would also sell his tenants down the river for five bucks. And what he didn't know he would make up. ‘Has it occurred to you that he might be mistaken?' I suggested.

She shook her head. ‘I checked. A lady on the fourth floor of the apartment building opposite was kind enough to let me look out of her window. She even loaned me a pair of binoculars.'

‘Now that is grotesque,' I said.

‘Not at all,' smiled McD. ‘It was a touching gesture of solidarity. I told her that I was your estranged wife and wanted to find out if you were cheating on me.'

‘I think I know the woman you mean,' I said.

‘Yeah, well, for what it's worth, if you're going to go on inviting girls up, from now on I'd close the blinds.'

‘Thanks a bunch …'

It was her turn to shrug. ‘My pleasure. Anyway, there in your living-room was a bearded man in his thirties who answers the description of Mr Sheppard. He was lying on the sofa watching television.'

‘Oh, really,' I said. ‘That's very interesting. Which channel?'

‘Couldn't say,' she replied. ‘The back of the set was facing the window.'

Which it was. I nodded with grudging admiration. ‘You're a sharp lady. You should have been a lawyer.'

McD shrugged modestly. ‘Must be in the blood. My father's the local sheriff, my mother's the daughter of a judge, and my favourite uncle is States Attorney.'

I had to laugh. This kid was really rubbing my nose in it.

She smiled along with me. ‘My brother is with the Justice Department in Washington. I'm the dumb one of the family. That's why I rode horses.' She killed her cigarette and her smile at the same time. ‘What I thought of doing was asking Mrs Perez along to see if she could positively identify Mr Sheppard as the man she met in Central Park. How does that grab you?'

‘Don't,' I said, with a shake of the head. ‘I've got enough problems.' I looked out of the window of the coffee shop and toyed with the idea of telling McD that she'd been spying on Jesus. And it was at that point that I saw what I'd failed to notice before; the videocamera that was aimed at us from the cab of the VW delivery truck.

I turned back to McDonald, pulled her bag towards me and found the mike that had been taped under the flap.

She tried to play it like Jane Fonda in
The China Syndrome
but underneath she was like a kid who'd been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. ‘I was, uh – hoping you'd give me something I could use to beat my editor over the head with.'

‘Well, you just crapped out, McD,' I said, exulting in the fact that it was now her turn on the receiving end. ‘In the first place, you did not obtain my permission for an on-the-record interview. And in the second place, your friends are photographing my worst side.'

The flush in her cheeks started to fade as she bounced back. ‘What friends?'

I jerked my thumb at the window. ‘Your friends in the van.' As she looked out of the window, I ripped the mike from her bag and said goodbye. ‘Okay, cut it right there, fellas. It's a wrap.'

‘Wait a minute,' she said.

I dunked the mike head first into her coffee and walked out leaving Channel Eight to pay the bill.

I found a pay-phone at the end of the block and rang the Manhattan General. I hung on for what seemed an age then finally got Miriam on the line. ‘Our cover's been blown,' I said. ‘I've got Carol's roommate and a camera crew from Channel Eight on my tail. She and Jeff Fowler have been working overtime and both our faithful assistants have been shooting their mouths off.'

‘Paul?' She sounded surprised. ‘But I didn't tell him anything.'

‘You didn't need to. Fowler managed to put it together from the bits Lazzarotti remembered. They don't know it all, like the way he disappeared from the slab, for instance, but they're pretty damn sure where that first blood sample came from, and they know that drawer eleven is empty.' I told Miriam about Fowler's fact-finding trip and how McD had been checking up on me.

‘Oh, God,' she sighed. ‘I wish to hell I'd been there.'

‘I'm glad you weren't,' I said. ‘You might have spilled the whole story. You're really hopeless when it comes to telling lies.'

She greeted this with a brief silence. ‘So what did you say to this lady?'

‘Nothing. I stuck to my original story and didn't admit a thing. But she knows that The Man is in my apartment and she's threatened to send Mrs Perez round to flush him out unless you and I start talking. Fowler has her partially convinced that they've stumbled across
The Man Who Fell To Earth.
'

‘Oh, Jeezusss …' groaned Miriam. ‘This is terrible.'

‘It's worse than that,' I said. ‘If this goes on the air, we could end up being the first unemployed Jewish doctor and lawyer in the history of New York. Can you imagine anything more ridiculous?'

‘Do you think ‘Brax is behind this?' she asked.

‘Of course he is,' I replied. ‘But not in the way you think. He's not sent someone disguised as a girl reporter. He's working on all of us. It's the ‘Braxian element in McDonald that's driving her on in the hope of uncovering some sensational story that's going to catapult her into the big-time, and it's beavering away inside us, sapping our moral courage and reinforcing our instincts for self-preservation.'

‘So what are you going to do?' said Miriam. ‘Stand and fight him?'

‘You've got to be kidding,' I replied. ‘This is no time to be a hero. I'm taking two weeks off, and you've got your patients to think of.'

‘True,' she said. ‘Are you going to move The Man up to Sleepy Hollow?'

‘I can try,' I said. ‘But that won't necessarily stop him reappearing in the middle of Manhattan.'

‘It might, if you stay out of town,' she replied.

‘Yehhh …' I mused. Then remembered something. ‘Oh, shit!'

‘What's wrong?' she asked.

‘I left forty dollars worth of books in the coffee shop when I walked out on McDonald,' I groaned. ‘What a pill …'

‘Go back and get them,' said Miriam.

‘I can't,' I said. ‘She and that camera crew may still be hanging around.'

‘Okay, phone them.'

‘I can't,' I replied. ‘I don't know the name of the place. Fuck it. Never mind. It'll teach me to avoid dramatic gestures. Are you coming round this evening?'

‘You bet,' she said.

‘Okay, take care – and don't forget to look over your shoulder.' I
hung up and, as I turned around, I found The Man standing behind me. I took a split-second to recover from the shock then I cased the street in both directions. I couldn't see the brown VW delivery truck but by now, I had begun to develop a healthy paranoia.

‘Come on, we've got to get off the street.' I grabbed The Man's arm and searched the passing traffic for an empty cab.

‘Relax,' said The Man. ‘You're the only one who can see me.' He side-stepped to let a young couple go by.

My tongue wrestled limply with the words. ‘You mean you're – invisible?' A passer-by turned and gave me an odd stare.

‘No,' he said. ‘You're not hallucinating. I'm really here. All I'm doing is creating a blank spot in the minds of anybody else who looks at me. It's a bit like the electronic counter-measures your Air Force uses to make their planes disappear from enemy radar-screens.'

‘Neat,' I said, out of the side of my mouth. ‘You must be able to have some real fun with a stroke like that.'

He replied with a shrug. ‘It comes in handy now and then. Come on, I'll walk you back to the office.'

As we threaded our way through the unseeing crowds, I realised that The Man had just solved three of the passages in the Gospels that had been puzzling me. Maybe they caught your notice too because the first of them clearly requires the use of paranormal powers for it to make sense. The incident I'm referring to is in Luke, chapter 4, beginning at verse 16, when Jesus returns to Nazareth, teaches in the synagogue and gets everybody so steamed up that in verse 29, they run him to the edge of town and are about to throw him over a cliff. Then comes verse 30 and the teaser – ‘…
but he, passing through the midst of them, went his way
'. To Capernaum.

I'd been trying to work out how he could have just walked away from a lynch mob that had actually had him by the collar and now, the answer was walking right beside me.

The second passage covers a similar tight corner. This time in the Temple at Jerusalem where The Man had been sounding off and, predictably, had upset a lot of folks. By this time, of course, he was doing his best to make himself unpopular in order to qualify for the ultimate sanction – crucifixion. John, chapter 8, verse 59 is where the magic happens: ‘…
then they took up stones to cast at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the Temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by'.
Note the words. He wasn't stuck out of sight
behind a pillar. He was right in amongst them, but they couldn't
see
him.

The third passage is less explicit but you still get the impression that, once again, he blanked himself out of the landscape. John, chapter 10, verse 39: ‘…
therefore they sought him again to take him, but he escaped out of their hand'.
Three near-fatal encounters from which he escaped by the use of his extraordinary powers, in order to die on the
cross.
No one could argue that being thrown over a cliff, or being stoned by a mob are markedly more attractive alternatives. Neither carry a built-in guarantee of instant death. In fact, I would suggest that both could be pretty messy. So it wasn't
just
the suffering on the cross which Christians have made such a big thing of, that was the reason for the crucifixion. There had to be other factors involved. Things that I did not yet clearly understand. Because although death on the cross might be what the American legal system would call a cruel and unusual punishment, it was not a rare occurrence in first-century Palestine. As Publius Quintilius Varus and his two legions had shown. It could happen to anybody and frequently did.

I could have asked him outright for the answer but I chose not to. Firstly, because I now knew that he would tell me in his own good time. And secondly because I wanted to reach out towards the answer intuitively. Put it down to my desire to be a smart ass if you like, but I genuinely believed that if I got to the answer before he gave it to me, I would be on the brink of real understanding.

We reached 49th Street and paused on the sidewalk across from my office building. ‘Are you going to come up?' I asked.

He shook his head. ‘You've got work to do.'

‘Where are you going – back to the apartment?'

‘No,' he said. ‘I thought I'd take a ride on a bus – if that's okay with you.'

‘Whatever you like,' I replied. ‘But I can tell you now, it won't be as much fun as. time-travelling.'