Mystery

Tom moved quietly down the stairs. Only a few yards from the bottom, he heard the rattle of the library doorknob and unconsciously straightened up as the door opened on a wave of shouts and gunshots. His father stood outlined against a smoky, flickering pale blue background, like a figure at the mouth of a cave.

“You think I’m deaf?” his father asked. “Think I can’t hear you creeping downstairs like a priest in a brothel?”

“I was just going out for a little bit.”

“What the hell is there to do outside, this time of night?”

Victor Pasmore had crossed over the line between a little bit drunk and a little bit drunker, which meant moving from a sort of benevolent elation to surliness.

“I’m supposed to take this book over to Sarah Spence.” He held it out toward his father, who glanced at the cover and squinted up at his son. “She asked me to bring it over once I was through with homework.”

“Sarah Spence,” his father said. “You two used to be pretty good friends.”

“That was a long time ago, Dad.”

“Hey—have it your way. What do I know?” He glanced back into the library, where the noises coming from the television had just increased dramatically—squealing tires and more gunshots. “I suppose you did finish your homework, huh?”

“Yes.”

He chewed on some unspoken thought for a second, and looked back into the flickering blue cave. “Step in here for a second, will you? I wasn’t going to say anything about this, but—”

Tom followed his father into the television room. Victor moved to the table beside his chair and picked up a half empty glass. A grinning woman holding up a container of dishwashing liquid filled the screen, and the music suddenly became much louder. Victor took several big swallows, backed into his chair, and sat down without taking his eyes off the television.

“Got a funny call a little earlier. From Lamont von Heilitz. That make any sense to you?”

Tom said nothing.

“I’m waiting, but I’m not hearing anything.”

“I don’t know anything about it.”

“What do you suppose that old coot wanted? He hasn’t called since Gloria’s mother died and we moved in.”

Tom shrugged. “He wanted to invite you for dinner.”

“Lamont von Heilitz never invited anyone for dinner, as far as I know. He sits in that big house all day long, he changes suits to come outside and pull a dandelion out of his lawn—I know because I’ve seen it—and the only time I’ve ever known him to act like a human being was when you had that accident and he gave me books for you to read. Which did you more harm than good, in my opinion.” Victor Pasmore raised his glass to his mouth and gulped, glaring at Tom over the rim as if to challenge him.

Tom was silent.

His father lowered the glass and licked his lips. “You know what they used to call him? The Shadow. Because he doesn’t exist. There’s something wrong with him. Some people have a bad smell that follows them around—you ought to know this, you’re getting out in the world. Some day you’ll have a business, kid, I know it’s a shock, but you’re gonna work for a living, and you’ll have to know that some people it’s better to avoid. Lamont von Heilitz never worked a day in his whole life.”

“Why did he call?”

Victor turned back to the television set. “He called to invite you to dinner. I told him you could make that decision for yourself. I didn’t wanna tell him no straight to his face. Let a couple weeks go by, let him forget about it.”

“I’ll think about it,” Tom said, and began moving toward the door.

“I guess you haven’t been listening to me,” Victor Pasmore said. “I don’t want you to have anything to do with that freak. He’s bad news. Your grandfather would tell you the same thing.”

“I guess I better get going,” Tom said.

“Keep it in your pants.”

Outside in the warm humid darkness, a fat black cat named Corazon, a pet of the Langenheims’, materialized beside him. “Cory, Cory, Cory,” Tom crooned, and bent down to stroke the animal’s silky back. The big cat pushed its heavy body against his shins. Tom scratched its wedge-shaped head, and Corazon looked up at him with uncanny yellow eyes and trotted ahead of him down the path to the sidewalk, her thick tail raised like a flag. When they reached the sidewalk the cat stood beside him for a moment in a round circle of light. Tom took a step left toward An Die Blumen, which led to The Sevens, the street on which the Spences inhabited a thirty-room Spanish extravaganza with an interior courtyard, a fountain, and a chapel that had been converted into a screening room. Corazon tilted her head, and light from the street lamp turned her eyes to transparent mystery. She began moving across the street with a gliding muscular step and disappeared into the darkness between the Jacobs’s house and Mr. von Heilitz’s.