Escape the Night (34 page)

Martin followed like a second shadow.

Two men with backpacks moved across the clearing.

The cabin sat by itself: no one heard the dull crunch of their footsteps or saw the flashlight moving with them toward the door.

It opened with a soft, metallic click.

Ten minutes later, they left as they had come, silent and alone. Snow fell, blurring the trail of their boots.

It was snowing harder when Noelle and Peter reached the cabin. Peter left his headlights on for a moment: large, moist flakes fell into a flawless blanket of white. “This is more like the
beginning
of the world,” he mused.

Noelle kissed him. “Let's go inside.”

They got out; Peter stood gazing at the pine cabin etched against the light. Noelle sensed him letting his mind catch up with his body; silent, she looked with him. Framed against the sky and stars, the fieldstone chimney warmed her.

When she turned back, Peter was staring at an indentation in the snow.

“Come on,” she said. “We'll build a fire.”

“Hypnosis,” Carey snapped. “Some man I've never met, tampering with my subconscious …”

Englehardt could scarcely see the tape in front of him.
Hypnosis
, he thought foolishly—not from a
Freudian
…

When the telephone rang, Englehardt was in shock, unable to move.

“Please, Peter,” Levy was entreating. The telephone kept ringing.

Englehardt snatched at it. “Wait, dammit—I'm still listening.”

“If I'm to help, Peter, I must know what happened to you.”

“
No
,” Englehardt commanded; as if on cue, Carey answered, “I have to think,” and slammed the door behind him.

Englehardt placed both palms flat on the desk. He took one breath, expelled it, and took the telephone off “hold.” “This tape …”

“Pogostin's a psychologist.” Martin's voice betrayed a veiled amusement. “He graduated from Columbia and, according to his book, has used hypnosis to treat amnesia for the past six years. The book's called
Trance and Trauma
—I bought it this afternoon.” He paused; Englehardt swore he heard muffled laughter before Martin asked respectfully, “Was there something else?”

Englehardt felt betrayal all around him. He had seduced Barth with promises; then Levy had panicked and changed his own rules; now, trapped in plans he'd set in motion, Englehardt was taunted by his tool.

He thought of killing Martin, and then saw it was too late.

“I want Pogostin covered.” He pronounced each syllable as if it were a bullet.

“A second break-in?” Martin's voice was light with innocence. “I've been busy with what you promised Barth—the van's equipped; I have the key, and I've already spoken to the neighbors. Do you still want me to go through with it?”

Englehardt shut his eyes. “Yes,” he said succinctly, “just add Pogostin,” and then murdered Martin in his mind.

Softly, Martin hung up.

Noelle watched the fireplace: tongues of orange and blue came and went and came again, growing brighter in the darkness. When she looked up again, Peter had moved to the window, staring out.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“With me, I suppose.” Turning, Carey glanced at the chain across the door, and then knelt beside her. “Since you came back from El Salvador, I haven't once asked how it was.”

“Better late than never.” Noelle smiled wryly. “Not so good, in fact. Poverty, an army that's on its own—Duarte tries, but D'Aubuisson's a killer: if
he's
elected, the electorate will start to shrink. That's one of the most closed-off faces I've ever seen, incidentally—there's no one home there except Francisco Franco.”

“So what will
we
do?”

“Try working with whoever, I suppose.” Reaching out, Noelle touched the hair curling at Peter's neck. “It was another trip, and now I'm here. I'm just glad to have you with me.”

“I wish I were better company.” He looked at his fingernails. “It's hard, right now …”

She watched him. “It's okay, Peter. I didn't
say
right now.”

Suddenly, Peter pulled her close. “Right now,” he murmured, “I just want to hold you.”

The East Nineties, Martin thought, psychiatrists' heaven.

Across the street, in the pale light of an all-glass lobby, a uniformed guard paced circles around his desk.

Martin crossed the street, pushed through the glass door, and plopped his briefcase on the desk, smiling into the guard's face. “Forgot my homework,” he said in embarrassment, and scribbled on the register the name of the building's only law firm. In the space for his own name, he signed, “Christopher Marlowe”: security people were so stupid.

“You new here, Mr. Marlowe?”

Martin felt a moment of near-affection; the guard was opaquely earnest. “It's good you're so observant. They brought me in for securities work, just last week—stocks and bonds, you know.”

“I thought I'd have remembered you.” The guard nodded sagely. “Bonds—that's where the money is, all right. That, and those computer games.”

“Oh, yes,” Martin said softly. “Oh, yes, indeed.”

Smiling, he walked to the elevator, briefcase swinging at his side.

He stepped in; quickly, he noted the emergency exit from the stairwell, fifteen feet across the lobby, and then pushed the button for the tenth floor. As the elevator rose, Martin smiled again: he could have used Tennessee Williams …

The elevator stopped at the door of the law firm. Martin got out, found the stairwell and descended two dark flights.

Pogostin's office was at the far end of the corridor, and its lock was moronically simple.

Inside, it was black.

For a moment, Martin stopped, imagining: when he turned on the light, Noelle Ciano would be waiting there, alone. Martin pulled the camera from his briefcase, hitting the button.

There were a couch, two chairs, and a desk.

Behind the desk, Martin saw the flat brown tape recorder.

He photographed it twice, thinking of Englehardt. With each day of Carey's analysis, the small man seemed to need him more, just as he needed Noelle Ciano.

Someday, soon, they would make a trade.

Two flights of stairs, ten flights down in the elevator, were lost in mental images, until the guard's admiration broke his trance. “That was
fast
, Mr. Marlowe.”

“I knew what I wanted,” Martin said, smiling, and walked into the night.

Each morning, Noelle thought, should be as crystalline.

The lift took them up Mount Snow in a dizzying climb: its jagged peak as they moved closer was etched so clearly against a brilliant blue sky that it seemed more vivid. Slate-gray ridges marbled snow sparkling with sunlight; naked birch trees gleamed like polished silver from stands of pines; early skiers in bright jackets sped beneath them on the trails. When she turned to watch one, Peter asked, “Seeing photographs?”

“Some of my best.” Noelle leaned against him. “I hope you're not too tired.”

He kept staring forward. “Just of the dream.”

Three men with packing crates and tool kits nodded to the doorman and took the elevator to Carey's apartment.

Martin was already there.

Answering the door, he said, “One thing from each room.”

The men disappeared inside.

Noelle raced after Peter Carey.

The trail was steep, narrow: Carey skied recklessly, throwing himself away. His skis spat white powder; pines flashed at the corner of her eyes; wind lashed her face and hair and crackled against her parka.

She strained to catch him.

All at once the trail widened and became less steep. Pushing off with her poles, Noelle curled forward and began skiing a breakneck straight line. Peter's back moved toward her …

She flew past him fifty feet from the bottom.

Skidding, Carey reached her in a nimbus of snow. “Enough,” she told him. “You'll break your neck.”

Silent, Carey knelt to check his bindings. “You're right,” she remarked. “The problem's that fancy shit you buy. You should start renting your equipment, like I do.”

The noonday sun was warm on her face. When Peter smiled up at her, it was worth a picture.

The tall man finished photographing each angle of Carey's apartment. The second took inventory; the third called to Martin from the bedroom. He touched the wall above Carey's bed with one fingertip. “This wall,” he said. “Behind the rubber plant.”

Martin nodded and went back to the kitchen.

The tall man had put away his camera and began unscrewing the mouthpiece of the telephone. “What kind of transmitter?” he asked Martin.

“The least conspicuous,” he answered. “We won't be far away.”

Above the rim of his first brandy, Carey glanced around the lodge, searching for an ugly stranger.

Their table near the fireplace had a clear view of the first floor: the bar and tables had begun to fill with twosomes and foursomes and singles looking to pair up for the night, their laughter forming a wall of noise against which Carey and Noelle were silent. He kept looking. “Ugly,” she had told him, “with a kind of hanging underlip.”

“See something?” she asked.

Carey shook his head; as cover, he remarked, “I was wondering how many of these couples would still be together next year,” and then realized, oddly, that this was true.

Leaning toward the fire for warmth, Noelle shot him a quick look back. “What made you think of that?”

“The hustling, I suppose.” Carey turned to her. “Maybe us.”

Thoughtfully, Noelle gazed past him at the crowd. “We're really not doing much better than our parents, are we—any of us.”

“At what?”

“At ‘relationships'—that's a great eighties word, isn't it?” Her eyes were troubled. “I mean for
them
it's turned out pretty sad—women like my mother marrying ‘good providers' who'd ‘take care of them' and then they get to forty-five and their husband's this condescending stranger and their kids have split, and they're
no one
—no skills, no money: Mrs. John Doe, the maid-for-life. God, when I think of how my mother's lived, it's like someone's walking over my grave. But every time they visit, all she asks is when
I'm
getting married, like the Pulitzer was something I won in the Pillsbury bake-off. I don't know whether to be sad or pissed off.”

Carey nodded. “Sometimes I imagine what
my
parents would be like. I guess one thing about it is that I don't have to watch them growing old.”

For the first time, Noelle smiled. “Oh, I see your father as this rake—cool, and very
distingué
.” The smile faded. “Only look at people
we
know, Peter: half my friends are living in and out with different guys, or getting divorced, and nothing lasts—it's just serial monogamy, that's all, with abortions instead of babies. And me—I've become so determined
not
to be my mother that I'm always checking to see whether I've got a fair deal or have started getting screwed.”

“If you were that much of a hard ass, Ciano, you'd have bailed out in Greenwich.”

“I'm talking
theory
.” Her smile came and went. “Anyhow, I just hate to think that the only basis for people staying together was the economic slavery of women.”

Carey permitted himself a quick glance around the room, saw nothing he could fix on, and finished his brandy. “Really, I don't know any more than you do.” He stared into his glass. “Thinking about it, I've only seen one marriage I'd give a damn for—some college friends who married so young they didn't know any better than to just be happy—and she's with their kids so much that nothing she says now interests anyone but him. I'd go nuts listening to her, and yet they're happy, the kids are happy—you get into all those cosmic questions: the individual versus society, what debts we owe to others as opposed to ourselves, who raises children …”

“So where do
you
come out.”

He shrugged. “Oh, I love my kids too much already to give them a father like me.”

Noelle looked mildly amused. Half-seriously, half-facetiously, she asked, “But what if
your
father had felt like that?”

His father screamed
.

Levy wished him to be hypnotized; he could not tell her this.

Carey forced another smile. “Then I wouldn't have all these problems,” he said lightly. His father's burning face receded as he looked back into hers. “But then, neither would you.”

“I don't mind.” Noelle's eyes met his; softly, she added, “Let's go back to the cabin, okay?”

As they left, Carey checked the bar.

He locked their door behind them.

The three men selected one item from each of Carey's rooms, showing them to Martin for approval before they sealed them in a packing crate.

Martin nodded without comment: they were all appliances—a coffee-maker, a laser lamp, a clock-radio—and all plugged into walls.

When the packing was done, the three men carried the crate to the van they'd parked downstairs. The doorman waved taxis around it, clearing their way.

Martin stayed to dust each room for fingerprints: except for the missing appliances, all was as he'd found it.

Leaving, he smiled at Carey's silent alarm, then locked the door behind him.

Carey and Noelle lay next to each other on the rug.

The fire was orange-yellow, their wine glowed deep red in bright crystal, warmth and dark surrounded them. Their bodies were torpid, pleasantly weary. Their dishes were still on the table—the flames had drawn them like children. They smoked marijuana.

Carey passed her the joint. “Where'd you get this?” he asked.

“The guy next door—I thought maybe you could use some to unwind.” She took a hit, passing it back.