Deadstick by Terence Faherty

Author:Terence Faherty
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, pine barrens, owen keane
Publisher: The Mystery Company

Sixteen

The city was giving up the struggle. It was five o’clock, and late enough in the year for the sky to reinforce the idea that five was a natural breaking point in the day. I mingled with the evacuees and tried to come up with a plan. Background noise for my walk was provided by the aggressive traffic and an occasional portable stereo carried by someone who had no other way to declare a space in the city. The sidewalks were dominated by purposeful people, tired, but following a determined path with enough concentration to shut out those around them. Carried along with them were people like myself, who looked for something in faces and storefronts and sunsets because we had not found that distant goal. We searched without heart, avoiding the eyes of other searchers.

I was looking for a particular research assistant. I seriously considered going back to see her. I wanted to tell her that she was wrong, that my plot was real, which shows how little feel I had for our relationship. Telling her I’d imagined the whole thing was a better way out, as long as I could convince her that I’d never do it again. But telling her anything at that moment was impossible. She was probably halfway to Brooklyn. I hadn’t the nerve to carry the fight there.

My deadline was passing as I walked. Whatever tenuous claim I had to Robert Carteret’s sponsorship was passing with it. My letter of instruction, which I’d been carrying as a talisman, had already turned to dross. I had the feeling that, in exchange, Mildred Tucker and Dr. Schiel had given me something more powerful. And more dangerous.

I worked out my plan in a moment spent standing in front of a drugstore that sold everything but drugs. Its lunch counter was serving coffee and pie to homeless people who had temporarily conceded the sidewalks to the commuters. In a back aisle, I found a box of typing paper with four or five price tags pasted on top of one another, a large manila envelope, and a yellow plastic report cover designed to hold paper with a small clamp.

A girl from the lunch counter came over to the register to take my money. She stayed to watch as I fastened the blank typing paper into the cover.

“In a hurry?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Need a pen?”

“No, thanks.” On the envelope, in the upper-left-hand corner, I printed the name and address of my firm. On the front, in large block letters, I added “Carolyn Vernia” and “Confidential.”

The girl was still watching. I smiled. “I could use a cab.”

“Good luck, honey,” she said.

I lost the time it took me to walk two blocks before I lucked onto a cab that was dropping off a fare. At a red light I opened my blank report to the first page. On it I wrote: “Which Carteret brother are you holding on Long Island?” Beneath that, I inserted my business card.

“What’s so funny, mister?” the cab driver asked me.

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