Odd Hours by Dean Koontz

Author:Dean Koontz
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Cooks, Mediums, Fiction - Espionage, Horror, Fiction, Occult fiction, Suspense, Dean R. (Dean Ray) - Prose & Criticism, Koontz, Horror fiction, General, Occult & Supernatural, Thriller
ISBN: 9780553591705
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2009-04-28T07:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-SEVEN

BECAUSE MY FETTERED ANKLE WOULD NOT allow me to go easily to Mr. Sinatra, he came to me. He sat in the chair that Chief Hoss Shackett had occupied, across the table from me.

In the ceiling, the light fixture was recessed behind a flush-mounted sheet of plastic. That panel was frosted, a blind eye.

The only place in the room where a camera could have been concealed was in the duct that provided fresh air. Through the slots in the vent grille, I could not see any telltale gleam of a lens.

Considering the brutal interrogations that the chief had surely conducted in this room and that he would soon conduct again, I did not believe he would have installed a camera. He would be concerned that it would accidentally—or by the intention of a whistle-blower—record crimes that might lead to his imprisonment.

For the same reason, I doubted that the room was fitted with listening devices. Besides, as far as the chief knew, I had no one to whom I could talk.

Mr. Sinatra had lost his cocky air. He appeared distraught.

Throughout his life, he had been a patriot, in love with America both for what she was and for her potential. The plot that he had heard described in this room had clearly devastated him.

In December 1941, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, “the Voice” had been drafted. But at his physical, he was rejected and classified 4-F because of a punctured eardrum that he had suffered during birth. Subsequently, he tried four times to enlist. He used every person of influence he knew—they were numerous—to get the army to reclassify him and to accept him for service, but he never succeeded.

Although he weighed 135 pounds in those days, he had been a scrapper from childhood, quick to defend himself or a friend, making up in heart and temper for what he lacked in size. He never walked away from a fight and would have made a good soldier, though he might have been a discipline problem from time to time.

I said, “When you were born in your parents’ Hoboken tenement, you weighed thirteen and a half pounds. Your grandma Rose was an experienced midwife, but she’d never seen a baby as big as you.”

He looked puzzled, as though he wondered if I was in denial of what I had heard from Hoss Shackett.

“The physician in attendance had never seen a baby so big, either. Your mother, Dolly, was under five feet tall, petite, and because of your size, the doctor had trouble delivering you.”

Frowning with impatience, Mr. Sinatra waved a hand dismissively, as though brushing aside the subject of his entry into the world, and he pointed to the steel door to focus my attention on what mattered.

“Sir, I’m going somewhere with this,” I promised him.

He looked dubious but remained attentive.

Because the circumstances of his birth were family legend, he knew what I told him: “The doctor used forceps, and didn’t use them well. He ripped your ear, cheek, and neck, puncturing your eardrum.

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