Shivers (3 page)

He couldn’t sleep. He knew that. He sat down on the sofa and thought about his brother for what seemed like hours. His brother was missing and nobody cared. He’d learned so much from Joey. The boy had taught him to open his eyes about so many things. Joey was so much more
involved
in everything—so much more of a political person, a realist—while Steven was the impractical dreamer. Steven had been caught up in himself all the time, while Joey often seemed to be carrying the woes of the world on his back. That’s why Steven had been glad to see Joey gallivanting around the city like a kid in a candy store; he’d been such a
serious
youngster, concerned that every person be given a fair deal. In contrast, Steven had thought of almost nothing but what he could get out of life—he could see that now—as if he was the center of all existence. He had spent his time embroiled in a writer’s fantasies. Joey could have offered so much more to the world, given half a chance. It just wasn’t fair. Not fair at all.

Damn it. He had to stop thinking about his brother as if he was dead. Save the eulogies for later.

Steven wished there was somebody he could talk to about this. Andrea—his girlfriend? lover? combatant? What could he call her these days seeing as how their relationship was crumbling? Anyway, she was out of town and, if she knew when she planned to return, had kept it a secret. He’d taken a well-deserved two weeks off from work—he was Senior Editor of
NightLife
Magazine—and wasn’t really all that close to any of the people he worked with, not enough to call them up at home just to burden them with his problems. At least he was free to give Joey’s disappearance his undivided attention.

Of course there was always his old buddy, Harry Faulkin, the weatherman. Harry and he had grown up together, gone to school together, built snowmen together as children. But Harry’s best friend was Harry, of that there was no doubt. He was not the shoulder-to-cry-on type, no sir. Steven was fond of the fellow, but only to a point. No, Harry was not the one to turn to when in need of comfort. Still, he
did
work for a TV station. Maybe later, if Joey had still not returned, Harry could pull some strings, get the boy’s picture on the air.

The house was so empty without Joey. Steven hadn’t realized how lonely he’d been.

It was six o’clock. He realized that he hadn’t had a bite to eat all day. He got up, went into the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator. He looked through the shelves carefully, searching for something bland but with substance. He had no real appetite. All he wanted was something to keep up his energy.

The phone rang? Police?
Joey?

It was a woman. She said her name was Vivian Jessup.

Vivian?
Joey’s Vivian?

“I just wanted to know if Joey is okay. He
is
all right, isn’t he?”

How did she know that Joey was missing? Or did she mean something else?

“He hasn’t come back yet,” Steven said, wondering exactly how close this woman had been to his brother, and what part she might have played in the boy’s disappearance.

“Come back? You mean you don’t know where he is?”

Steven quickly told her what had happened.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Then they’ve done it.”

“Pardon me?”

She didn’t explain, so Steven continued. “I filed an official report earlier today at the precinct. They just told me to wait and see, they’d do all they could.”

“What
are
they doing?”

“Not much.” He told her what Albright had said.

“I’m so sorry. I was . . . very fond . . . of Joseph. I . . .”

“Vivian,” he interrupted. “Have you seen my brother? Did you see him yesterday or any time last night? Do you know where he is now? You’re about the only person he knows in New York.”

She didn’t answer at first. Then she said, very quickly: “No, I haven’t seen him. I—look, I can’t talk on the phone. Please understand. I
would
like to talk to you privately. Could you come see me this evening about nine o’clock?”

“Yes, I guess so. But what is this about? Do you know something about Joey’s disappearance?”

“
I’m not sure.” She paused, as if trying to get her breath. “I really can’t talk now, not on the phone. Come by tonight.” She gave him her address.

Steven scribbled quickly in a note pad by the phone.
Madison and 68th.

“You will come?”

“I will. But can’t you tell me what this is all about?”

“Tonight. Nine o’clock. Goodbye.”

She hung up.

Eric Thorne left the Institute at 8:15
P.M
. and headed towards Broadway. His “friend” was missing tonight. His “friend” was an old drunkard who each night sprawled outside the entrance to a shuttered restaurant, and had done so at one spot or another for several years. Eric wondered what the hell had happened to the guy. He was
always
there.

He walked on toward the subway thinking about the nice dinner he’d be consuming in approximately an hour, but his thoughts kept returning to the derelict. Now that he thought about it, most of the bums who had hung out in this section of the city had disappeared. Other people might have assumed it was the advent of cold weather that had driven them elsewhere, but Eric knew better. He had worked in this area long enough to know that that wasn’t true. When winter came, they would just huddle up with a bottle somewhere, the alcohol warming them and pickling their brains to beyond the point where they could distinguish heat from cold. Of course many of them died. But not all. Not this many. And they were almost
all
gone now. Poor souls.

He was about to descend to the subway when an old sot approached him from behind the darkness of an abandoned car in the alleyway. “Fifty cents, mister? Got fifty cents?”

Was this the last remaining tramp? Eric wondered. He almost laughed at his own suspicious mentality.

He was almost sure that he had seen other figures back there in the shadows, nestled in alcoves, hiding next to garbage cans. But they’d darted out of sight—with a speed too fast for any derelict—before he could make certain. Perhaps they’d been figments of his imagination, products of his worsening eyesight. Well, at least this one was real.

“Fifty cents, please?”

Eric dug into his pocket for change. A quarter and two dimes. Well, it would have to do. Even as he handed the money to the man he knew it was more an act of futility than of kindness.

“Thank you, mister. God bless ya. God bless ya.”

There was something odd about the man. Beneath the smelly rags he wore for clothes, behind his dead, almost unseeing eyes, there was something
there.
Instead of the blank expression, the vacuous gaze of the typical drunk, there was a palpable
feeling,
an emotion made up of equal parts confusion, loneliness, and terror. They stood there at the top of the stairs staring at each other, both waiting for the other to speak. The drunk wanting and needing explanations; Eric waiting to hear the man before him give voice to the unspeakable horrors he had witnessed. Why could neither of them speak?

Eric turned away and started down the steps. Before he had gone even halfway, the drunk called out.

“Where are they?” he said. “Where have my friends gone?”

Eric turned back, saw the look of horror on the old drunk’s face, read his feelings and emotions, arid almost
reeled.
He started back down the stairs again, practically running toward the token booth. He quickly bought a token, raced through the turnstile, and just made it onto an uptown train.

He found a seat. He glanced out the window behind him as the train left the station, and saw that the drunk had followed him down the stairs, and was even now staring at him from the other side of the turnstile. The sight chilled Thorne’s blood. He pressed his hands over his eyes and did not remove them until the train had arrived at the next stop.

Amid the bustle of people who boarded and departed, he felt more secure. He tried to determine why that old man had so unsettled him. Certainly he’d dealt with derelicts before. Why such distress?

Because the man had read his mind.

It was usually the opposite. Thorne could pick up thoughts and feelings from other people, had been able to do it all his life. He had picked up frightening thoughts from that man, horrible images of living nightmares, of death and decay. That man had
seen
things, seen repulsive things done to other people. And though Thorne had caught only glimpses of the horror, that had been more than enough.

But it was not the images that had left him so shaken, but rather the fact that the man had willingly transferred those images to Eric’s mind, had even, in fact, picked up Eric’s thoughts as he’d walked by. He had
known
that Thorne had been wondering where the other derelicts had disappeared to! He had approached Eric not for money, but for the exchange of information.

Damn it!
Thorne swore to himself.
This is what my life has been devoted to. Why did I run away? Why didn’t I stay there with him, learn what he had to say?

Because the implications were just too horrible. The images he had picked up were too unreal, the product of a crazed consciousness. He would have learned nothing from a man whose mind had long since abandoned him. Surely he had not been sane. He couldn’t have been.

But nevertheless, he had definitely been a
sensitive.
Thorne could not ignore that. He would have to find him again.

And God help him when he did.

* * *

Steven left for Vivian’s apartment at 8:35. He walked down to Lincoln Center to catch the crosstown bus at 66th Street. The bus cut through Central Park and would stop not far from Ms. Jessup’s apartment house. He boarded, paid his fare, and sat down in the back. There were only a few other passengers.

As the bus turned into the road through Central Park, he stared out the window, trying to see past his reflection, to catch a glimpse of the darkness outside and whatever it might have been hiding. He felt chilled—not just by the cold weather, but by the eerie quality of the park at night. Was his brother in there somewhere—in pain, crying, bleeding to death—or dead? Last night he’d looked all over the area where Joey had gone jogging, and again this morning before he’d gone to the police.
Nothing.

The bus went through a tunnel, and the moonlight was blocked. Steven thought for a moment that he had seen someone walking through the tunnel, someone hunched over, tired or ill.
Joey?
He turned his head and stared into the tunnel as the bus pulled out, but the figure was gone, if it had ever been there at all.
Stop seeing Joey in every shadow,
he told himself.
It won’t do any good.

He got off at Madison and 65th Street, walked up three blocks, and turned right at 68th. The woman’s home was located in the middle of the block. It was an old, but swanky, apartment house, with an aging doorman and a big, mirrored lobby full of plants and cushioned chairs. The doorman checked with Vivian Jessup via intercom, and Steven was allowed to proceed to the elevator. He stepped into the car, pushed the correct button, and tried to summon up a mental image of the woman he was about to meet. Her voice on the phone had been sultry, husky, sensual even, and she’d sounded older than he’d expected. Wasn’t that the rage these days—older women, younger men? He’d never really known what type of women his brother had gone for, but there was no reason to assume he stuck to women his own age. Maybe the two of them had had some kind of crisis—like he and Andrea had had.
They’d
spent plenty of nights staying up discussing their future, hadn’t they? Couldn’t Joey and Vivian have been doing the same?

There were only two apartments on each floor. He pressed the buzzer outside 14A and listened as soft, delicate footsteps approached from within.
Please be there, Joey. Be inside “shacked up” with Vivian.

The door opened. A cautious face looked out. Pretty, soft. Tense.

“Are you Mr. Everson?” the woman asked.

“Yes. Ms. Jessup, I presume?”

She nodded.
“Mrs.
Jessup. Come in, please.”

She was a beautiful woman, but even more “mature” than Steven had expected. She appeared to be at least in her mid-forties, maybe older. There was a glamorous aura about her, a sort of fading loveliness recaptured in part by paint and powder. She had an upswept hairstyle and wore vivid red lipstick. Golden earrings dangled from her creamy lobes. Her face was narrow, small, with hazel eyes, high model’s cheekbones, and a slightly longish—but attractive—nose. Her lips and eyes were small—made larger by the lipstick and mascara. The eyelashes may have been false. She was about five-foot-five, and slender. Her outfit—though a casual one—was chic and expensive, not the thing one wore to the supermarket.

As she ushered him into the living room, Steven wondered how she and Joey had ever managed to connect. He couldn’t imagine her sitting with the “chicks” in the East Side singles bars. Cocktail lounges and hotel bars were more her speed. She had to be quite wealthy, judging from the apartment. The living room was exquisite, with soft lights, mahogany furniture, and a rolling bar. There was a thick blue rug on the floor. The view from the panoramic window was stunning; one could see most of Central Park. The enormous Gulf and Western building, so brightly lit, was in the distance.

“You look a great deal like your brother, you know. Very handsome boys, I’ll tell you.”

“Thank you.” He didn’t feel particularly handsome. Something was wrong with Vivian. She was too composed, trying too hard to be casual—he found it hard matching her with the worried,-nervous voice he had heard on the phone, although he was sure it was the same voice.

“Can I get you a drink?” she asked, flashing her lovely, warm eyes in his direction. She motioned for him to sit on the couch.

“Yes, I’d like that. I could certainly use one.”